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From the British Quarterly Review, the highest authority in 



" A collected republication of the very brilliant and well-informed 
sketches which excited much attention and speculation on their appear- 
ance in the Daily News, and led men to ask whether there could be on 
the English press two men with opportunity and ability like those of the 
author of ' The Member for Paris.' Here are five-and-twenty sketches 
of the notabilities who, since Sedan, have been prominent in French 
affairs, from M. Thiers and Jules Simon to Alexandre Dumas, Louis 
Blanc, and Victor Hugo; while the account of such less-known politi- 
cians as Gambetta, Grevy, Rouher, Dufaure, Rochefort, and Girardin will 
be interesting from the freshness of their information. Such brilliant 
and sagacious sketches as those of Thiers, Louis Blanc, and Jules Simon 
will be read very eagerly. So with the characterizations of literary celeb- 
rities like Dumas, MM. Erckmann-Chatrian, Edmond About, and Victor 
Hugo. The charm and value of most of these sketches are that they 
are histories as well as portraits. It augurs well for France that novels 
like those of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian are superseding those of Dumas 
and Paul De Kock, and are penetrating every village." 

From The Press, Philadelphia, May i, 1873. 

" The author's name has not yet been disclosed. The general opinion 
is that an eminent English statesman wrote the book." 



MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC 



REPRINTED, WITH LARGE ADDITIONS, FROM 
" THE DAIL Y NE WSr 



^\j,<S^ace C\are G^- 



THE MEN 



THIRD REPUBLIC} 



PRESENT LEADERS OF FRANCE. 



BEPBINTED FR03I THE LONDON DAILY NEWS. 



^' 




PHILADELPHIA: 
PORTER & COATES. 

1873. 



t^ 



^ 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

M. THIERS 1 

MARSHAL MACMAHON 1/ 

M. GAMBETTA 33 

M. GREVY 46 

M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIUE 58 

M. ROUHER 70 

THE DUC DE BROGLIE 96 

M. DUEAURE _ . . . 108 

M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS .121 

THE DTJC d'AUDIFFRET-PASQI'IEU 135 

M. ERNEST PICARD 147 

CrENERAL FAIDHERBE 160 

BISHOP DUPANLOUP I7l 

M. LOUIS TEUILLOT 188 

THE DUC d'aUMALE 202 

M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN 221 

FATHER HYACINTHE 235 

MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN 246 

M. HENRI ROCHEFORT , 257 

M. EDMOND ABOUT 271 

M. GASIMIR PERIER 285 

M. JULES SIMON 295 

M. VICTORIEN SARDOU 309 

ADMIRAL POTHUAU 318 

M. LOUIS BLANC 329 

M. VICTOR HUGO ••««,•■... 343 



M. THIEES. 

A T tlie time wlien tlie Bourbon Restoration 
pressed heavily on tlie shoulders and con- 
sciences of Frenchmen, those who saw young Louis 
Adolphe Thiers arrive from Provence with nothing 
in his pocket but a prize essay on Vauvenargues, 
described him as a youth with a demon of restless- 
ness in his body, and a tongue that wagged like a 
bell's. A few years later (Jan. 1, 1830), when 
the first number of the National appeared, on the 
most detestable of papers, and with the most ad- 
venturous of staffs, the writer who shared with 
Auguste Mignet and Armand Carrel the editorial 
triumvirate, began to take lead in society, and the 
graphic M. de Lomdnie says of him : — " He at- 
tracted curiosity at once by the southern twang of 
his voice, the smallness of his size, the incom- 
parable vivacity of his speech, and a glance the 
odd fire of which was heightened by the large 
B 



2 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

spectacles lie wore ; also by a singular trick of 
fidgeting and shrugging his shoulders — all of 
which peculiarities, taken together, classed him as 
a being apart." The " being apart " had already at 
this period cleared the first steps of fame as if at 
a jump. He had been an art-critic ; had been 
shrieked at and menaced by painters ; had written 
on the drama, and offered to fight the entire male 
company of the Theatre Fran9ais if they were not 
content with his judgments ; had gone a walking 
tour of the Pyrenees, and published a volume on 
them ; had held during several years the post of 
pen-of-all-work on the Constitutiooiiiel, contribut- 
ing now a leader, now a review, now an epigram 
full of wit and personality, which would bring the 
victim of it posting down to the office, .jvhere an 
apology was invariably declined, and a duel ac- 
cepted with alacrity. Further, he had brought 
out his " History of the Revolution," which had 
galvanised France from end to end, and he enjoyed 
the reputation of being a Jacobin, who would be 
damned without remission, said the priests ; who 
would grow up to be somebody, prophesied shrewd 
old M. de Talleyrand. Men of this stamp, with a 



M. THIERS. 



taste for polemics, and a knack of hitting the 
right nail stunning blows on the head, are not 
pleasant adversaries for Ministers like M. de Polig- 
nac, and the latter had not been in office many 
weeks before the two had begun to do battle. M. 
Thiers had, indeed, remained in France specially to 
wage this war. Thinking that M. de Martignac's 
ministry was firmly anchored to power, and en- 
couraged by the success of the " History of the 
Revolution," he had proposed undertaking a " Ge- 
neral History of the World," and was actually 
about to start off on a voyage round the globe 
with Captain Laplace's Scientific Expedition, when 
Prince de Polignac's accession made him stop 
behind and found his paper. And a desperate 
paper it was, this National which the Royalist 
judges sought to smother with fines, and which 
the public kept alive and flourishing by subscrip- 
tions which covered the fines ten times over. 
Adolphe Thiers' s articles were read aloud in the 
streets and caf(^s. They grew every day in fire 
and boldness, and one of them, which has become 
almost historical from its title, " Le Roi regne et 
ne gouverne pas," was honoured with a vogue 



4 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

wliicli can only be paralleled by that of Henri 
Rocliefort's Lanterne in more recent times. Thiers 
was, in truth, the Eochefort of Charles X.'s Go- 
vernment, and perhaps no better contrast can be 
established between the intellectual condition of 
France in 1830 and in 1868 than by this com- 
parison. The Rochefort of the Empire was, at the 
best, but a shallow and ignorant, although droll, 
flagellant. The Rochefort of the Restoration was 
devoured by a thirst for instruction in all its 
branches. Having felt, after publishing the third 
volume of his " History," that he was deficient in 
special knowledge, he had set to work studying 
political economy under Baron Louis, and the art 
of war under Generals Foy and Jomini ; and of a 
summer's morning he might have been seen learn- 
ing to work field-pieces under the direction of 
some of his old schoolfellows, artillery officers, at 
Vincennes. Moreover, it was he who first an- 
nounced as an axiom and practised as a duty, that 
to write the account of a battle one should have 
visited and minutely inspected for one's seK the 
site where it was fought. 

The Bourbons disposed of, what more natural 



M. THIERS. 



than that the young champion whose pen had 
drawn up the famous " Protest against the Ordi- 
nances," should be called to a post under Govern- 
ment ? After he had read his " Protest " to the' 
two hundred foremost Liberals in the Chamber 
and the Press, some one had cried out that it 
should be taken at once to the printing-office. 
" Unsigned ?" was Thiers's indignant answer ; "we 
want names and heads at the end of such a docu- 
ment. In straits like these, a patriot should feel 
that he has no alternative but the guillotine or 
victory." There was the ring in these words 
which Frenchmen love, and the ex-journalist's ad- 
mirers failed not to predict that he would prove 
quite as stubborn and hard to beat in office as he 
had been out of it. Nor were they wrong. No- 
minally Under-Secretary at the Finance Office, 
under Baron Louis, Thiers was virtually the 
prompter of the Cabinet, and it was a strange 
thing to see this indefatigable man holding an 
inferior place, and yet so working upon his chiefs 
by his zeal, enterprise, and joerseverance, that they 
insensibly obeyed his lead. After Baron Louis it 
was Laffitte's turn to be guided by his subordi- 



6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

nate, and in a general way it may be said that 
Thiers began to guide everybody witb wbom he 
was brought into contact. The biographers of his 
earher days had described him as uncouth, self- 
asserting, and not over-observant of the courtesies 
of society. All this was changed now. He was 
quick of speech, generally monopolised the conver- 
sation, and had but a small regard for the prac- 
tical worth of other people's opinions ; but his 
geniality made his hearers forget this. How re- 
sist a man who stood with his back to the fire and 
talked to you for an hour to explain that an idea 
or an invention of which you fancied yourself the 
originator had been known long ago to him, and 
not only known but weighed and found wanting ? 
His experiences extended to all sciences. He had 
judged the prospects of railways from their out- 
set, and foresaw that they would never succeed in 
France. He was persuaded that the mission of 
his country was to be free at home and to exer- 
cise a sort of paternal dictatorship over the rest of 
Europe. He chafed under the influence wielded 
by the Duke of Wellington, which he called an 
" Agamemnonate ;" and which was an uncivilised 



M. THIERS. 



thing, a humiliating relic of those Treaties of 1815 
against which he would never miss an occasion of 
stirring up the bile of his countrymen. He had 
not yet got to think much about the balance of 
power. He was for sending off armies to free the 
Poles, Italians, and Belgians, not perhaps that he 
cared so much about these Poles and others, but 
because it was necessary that France should win 
battles somewhere in order to revive the self-confi- 
dence of her army. Foreign Cabinets, however, 
taking alarm at these views, he consented to shelve 
them on reaching a responsible position, first as 
Home, then as Trade, and finally as Prime Minister; 
and as his experience ripened he honestly avowed 
on many public occasions that for France to go 
fighting against all the other great Powers, even 
for such a commendable purpose as to obtain 
revenge for V/'aterloo, would really not be pru- 
dent. But ever and anon his French Chauvin 
thoughts would crop up in a speech, a letter, 
or in an impulsive communication to some aston- 
ished ambassador. He was not the' man to keep 
a check upon his feelings, tie liked to be mov- 
ing, doing, and saying. He fortified Paris, re- 



8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

organised tlie army, developed and strengthened 
the system of centralization inaugurated by the 
First Empire, and undertook a crusade against his 
old friends of the press, who were beginning to 
clamour that there was a great deal more of mili- 
taryism than of liberalism in his rule. This he 
denied, asserting that he was as fond of liberty as ever 
he had been. Perhaps he answered truly enough, 
but he chiefly liked the liberty which is given to a 
people, as a gold-piece is to a child, with the in- 
junction, " Put it in a drawer and don't spend it." 
When the French took their liberties out of the 
drawer, and seemed to think they were made for 
use, M. Thiers reproached them with ingratitude. 
That unpleasant little Egyptian business of 1840, 
when by his policy he at length drew down upon 
himself the visitation of Lord Palmerston and the 
Treaty of London, forced the too patriotic states- 
man to retire. 

M. Thiers' s dominant quality was and ever will 
be bravery. To this virtue is generally allied an 
active sense of honour, and M. Thiers is strictl}^ 
honourable. Nothing could well be fairer than 
his method of fighting when in opposition; and 



M. THIERS. 



the fear shown of him by M. Guizot, as well as the 
terrified hatred with which he was favoured by 
the Second Empire, sufficiently proved that his 
moderation was felt to be more dangerous than 
the uncompromising hostility of other men. The 
fact is, M. Thiers had his opinions built for him 
about forty years ago, like a house, and he has 
never moved out of them since. Not even in the 
hottest of his campaign against M. Guizot — not 
even when the Second Empire revelled strongest 
in its ill-got might — could one ever bring M. 
Thiers to indorse a programme which he would 
not have been prepared to fulfil if in power. In 
that delightful house of his in the Place St. George, 
where all the rising generation of Liberal Orleanists 
and moderate Republicans (that which Parisians 
term the Revue des Deux Mondes generation) sucked 
its political milk, he used to stand and hold forth 
with the vivacity of his sturdiest days against 
measures of tyranny or Government blunders. 
But he would never go beyond the length of what 
he termed les liberies necessaires in his schemes 
for reform ; and new theories were impetuously 
refuted by him, come they whence they might. 



lo MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

In the last days of the Second Empire, when 
Napoleon III. tried to strengthen his tottering 
throne by a new Plebiscitum, M. Thiers was the 
most determined of his opponents ; and he was an 
influential member of the very small minority who 
voted against the war with Prussia. His conduct 
was then denounced as anti-national, his constitu- 
ents called upon him to resign his seat, the windows 
of his house were broken by an infuriated mob, 
and he found it prudent to quit Paris for Trouville, 
whence he magnanimously sent to the Emperor 
some valuable strategical notes. When the tide of 
disaster had set in he showed equal generosity. 
He opposed the motion of Count Keratry for the 
impeachment of Marshal Leboeuf ; and when, after 
the fatal day of Sedan, there was a general outcry 
against personal government, M. Thiers evinced 
extreme moderation, and contented himself with 
proposing a Commission of National Defence, a 
scheme which was supported by Count Palikao, 
Minister of the Regency. Then he made a diplo- 
matic tour of Europe and did all that could be 
done to remedy evils for which he was in no 
sense responsible. But he found the ears of 



M. THIERS. 



every statesman in London, Vienna, St. Peters- 
burg, and Florence closed to his appeals, and on 
his arrival at Tours (21st October, 1870), M. 
Thiers was authorised by the Provisional Govern- 
ment to make o^'ertures to the Germans for an 
Armistice. His mission was at first unsuccessful, 
because he was instructed to insist on the re- 
victualling of Paris. France, however, was in no 
condition to resist any longer, and ultimately 
permission was obtained from the enemy to elect 
an assembly competent to treat for peace. M. 
Thiers Was chosen by overwhelming majorities for 
no less than twenty-six departments, and decided 
to sit for Paris, where 102,945 votes had been 
recorded for him. On the 17th of February, 
1871, M. Thiers was elected by the new National 
Assembly as " Chief of the Executive Power," 
and two days afterwards appointed his first 
Cabinet, which was composed of the most 
moderate men he could find for colleagues. M. 
J. Favre, foreign affairs ; Ernest Picard, interior ; 
J. Simon, public instruction ; Dufaure, justice ; 
Lambrecht, commerce ; Le Flo, war ; Pothuau, 
navy ; Pouyer-Quertier, finance ; Larcy, public 



12 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

works. Witliin a week afterwards lie signed the 
preliminaries of peace with Count Bismarck, four 
days having been spent in anxious but vain endea- 
vours to obtain some diminution of the enormous 
indemnity of five milliards exacted by the Germans. 
In a speech, broken by sobs, he told the Parlia- 
ment of Bordeaux the sad result of his negotia- 
tions, and the preliminaries of peace were adopted 
(March 1st) by 546 votes against 107. Since that 
time M. Thiers has held su^Dreme power in France, 
and there is not a single department of administra- 
tion over which he does not practically preside, his 
Ministers being in fact his subordinates and instru- 
ments merely fulfilling his commands. To chro- 
nicle the actions of M. Thiers as President of the 
Republic, would be to write the history of France 
for the last two years. It is enough here to say 
that whatever has been done to restore peace and 
security to the country has been done by him, and 
that he has reigned with more absolute authority 
than was ever exercised by any French sovereign. 

Can it be said that he has changed some of his 
convictions now, and that in seeking to found a 
Republic he has thrown overboard his former pre- 



M. THIERS. 



judices in favour of monarcliy ? This question 
would be best answered if M. Thiers were suddenly- 
removed from power, and then asked to offer 
an opinion on his successor. He is a man of 
generous views, patriotic to the core, and quite 
alive to the necessity of keeping his country out 
of dynastic prize fights. But his chief admiration 
for the Republic may be presumed to lie in the 
office which he himself holds under it ; else why in 
republicanising his countrymen should he take so 
much of the Republic into his own hands and 
leave so little in theirs ? However, it will be a 
great thing if he manages to found the Re- 
public merely in name : the Elisha who catches 
up his cloak will have the task of establishing it 
in spirit. 

M. Thiers was born at Marseilles on the 16 th 
of April, 1797. His father was a working lock- 
smith, his mother the daughter of a ruined clothier. 
He was educated on the foundation of a public 
school in his native town, and, like most little 
men, had a strong fancy to 'become a soldier. 
After some trouble, however, he was got off safely 
to the College of Aix, and there studied law, not 



14 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

very successfully. The authorities of the place 
were at first unfavourably impressed by his antics, 
and he tricked them out of a prize in a frolicsome 
way, but he ended by winning their esteem, and 
they chose him, as promptly as possible, for their 
representative in Parliament. This dignity was, 
perhaps, the only one which ever overpowered 
him, and he was so full of it that his earliest 
speeches were ludicrously pompous ; but he soon 
glided into that easy conversational style, abound- 
ing with anecdote and illustration, which has made 
his oratory so fascinating. 

None of the published portraits of M. Thiers do 
justice to his appearance. There is an expression 
of liveliness and good temper in his face, an 
elasticity in his figure, which no artist has seized. 
In private life he has a very subtle power of 
charming, and great constancy as a friend. He is 
aristocratic in his sympathies, fond of soldiers and 
dukes, and has considerable admiration for here- 
ditary nobility. He chose a very grand duke to 
represent him in London, and a very grand mar- 
quis for Berlin. Simple almost to austerity in his 
personal tastes, he has, nevertheless, one of the 



M. THIERS. 



best cooks in Europe, and Ms dinners are triumphs 
of taste, his conversation as exquisite as a wine 
of rare vintage. Seventy-five winters have not 
diminished the natural fires of his temperament. 
His intense love of fun and practical jokes has 
sometimes approached to buffoonery, or gone beyond 
it. He once saved himself from the rage of a mob 
of rioters, by a deed of such courage and effrontery 
that it cannot be told in English ; and he fought 
a duel at fifty-three years of age Avith M. Bixio, 
during a sitting of Parliament. It is a curious 
commentary on national manners, that so nimble 
and volatile a personage, who could hardly be 
named without a smile by Englishmen, should be 
considered one of the most serious men in France. 
The Legitimists only assert that there is a single 
blot on M. Thiers' s fame. They blame him for 
having employed the secret service funds under 
his control, as Marshal Soult's Minister of the 
Interior, to buy the conscience of one Deutz, a 
sordid fellow who betrayed the Duchess de Berri 
to the Government of Louis Philippe. If this was 
an unchivalrous proceeding, it was also a shrewd 
one, for it put an end to a revolution which was 



i6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC, 

keeping La Vendue in flames, and disturbing the 
peace of Europe. 

It has been urged, too, that born poor, he 
required fortune ; born obscure, he required a 
name ; an unsuccessful lawyer, a second - rate 
author, he might have grown old in a newspaper 
office, had he not turned public troubles to his 
personal advantage. The same things might be 
said of many successful politicians, and will always 
be on the noisy tongue of disappointment. It 
might be justly answered, that if M. Thiers was 
once small and insignificant, placed fairly now upon 
the height of his reputation, he is a giant among 
his contemporaries. 



MAESHAL MACMAHOK 

COME seven-and-forty years ago tliere was en- 
tered at the Military School of St. Cyr a boy 
of seventeen, who, besides other merits, possessed 
that of being the son of a Peer of France, an ad- 
vantage which in those days rendered others super- 
fluous. St. Cyr was not then what it had been in 
the " Usurper's " — that is, in Napoleon's — time, a 
training place for aspirant captains of all classes. 
It was stocked with noblemen— Rohans, Montmo- 
rencys, Harcourts, Luynes ; and the great amuse- 
ment of these young bucks was to go to Paris of a 
Sunday and make disturbances at the Theatre 
Fran9ais by hissing Mdlle. Mars, suspected of 
Bonapartism ; or to pick quarrels in the streets 
with Liberal journalists. Perhaps the young cadet, 
who was by-and-by to be M. Thiers' s chief lieu- 
tenant in the government of France, may have 
Qow and then planned in Ms dormitory how he 
c 



18 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

and his friends miglit fasten a quarrel on the 
"bumptious scribbler" wbo was defaming Charles 
X. in the Gonstitutionnel, and publishing his dis- 
loyal " History of the Revolution " in monthly 
parts ; and it is probable that if the scribbler in 
question had shown himself less ready on all occa- 
sions to lay down his pen for the sword, his life 
might have been made so burdensome to him as 
to have nipped his political ambition in the bud. 
Those were • days when men did not keep their 
opinions in their breast pockets, to be displayed 
here and there when needful ; they flaunted them 
high on their heads, like a set of plumes. M. 
Constant de Rebecque, editor of the Minerve, 
better known as Benjamin Constant, having fought 
half-a-dozen times, hired a fencing master at last 
to sign his articles for him, and give an account of 
visitors. This gentleman couched five officers of 
the King's Body Guard on the sward of the Bois 
de Boulogne within twelve months. Three-and- 
twenty St. Cyrians having thereupon drawn lots, 
and sworn to fight him turn by turn until he was 
worsted, he accepted the challenge, and would have 
faced it had not the Body Guard hit upon the much 



MARSHAL MACMAHON. 19 

more feasible plan of loosing upon him a rival 
bravo named Chocquart. The honest pair met on 
a patch of ground where the Avenue d'Eylau now 
stands, the spectators being more than fifty in 
number, and comprising many of the leading writers 
of the Liberal press and the principal officers-in- 
waiting on the King. The duel lasted three-quar- 
ters of an hour, at the end of which time the 
Liberal champion, outwitted by a secret thrust, 
had his throat cut from ear to ear. And it is a 
pleasing characteristic of the period that Benjamin 
Constant, instead of wasting time in useless grief 
over his defender's fate, forthwith bethought him 
of hiring the vanquisher at an increased salary to 
take his place. Let any one who attended the 
earlier performances of Rabagas at Paris or Bor- 
deaux, and who thought them exciting, just imagine 
what the excitement was when, soon after Napoleon's 
death, it became bruited about that in a perform- 
ance of Cinna, the actor Talma, who had been the 
Emperor's personal friend, would play the part of 
Augustus with his face made up like Bonaparte's ! 
The Theatre Fran9ais was croAvded from roof to 
basement, the entire school of St. Cyr being there, 



20 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

witli tlieir wliite handkercliiefs tied round tlieir 
sleeves in guise of Koyalist armlets. The Latin 
Quarter students, who, like other Liberals of the 
day, made — ^Heaven forgive them ! — common cause 
with the Bonapartists, choked up the gallery and 
pit ; retired officers of the Grande Armde were 
everywhere to be seen with bunches of violets (the 
Imperialist flower) in their button-holes ; and the 
Guards officers, in full uniform, clustered together 
by dozens, ready for any such pretty piece of work 
as buffeting a Liberal first, and then skewering him 
afterwards. Of course the police, having wind of 
all this, carefully superintended M. Talma's dress- 
ing before the curtain rose, but whether it was 
from accident or design the actor was no sooner on 
the stage than he stroked down over his forehead 
the well-known wisp of hair which distinguished 
Napoleon ; and at this the house rose en masse. 
The Liberals cheered enthusiastically, and the 
Royalists retorted with roars of Vive le Eoi ! Nor 
was this mere empty barking with no bite to 
follow, for, above the din of voices, slaps on the 
face resounded loud and frequent ; and the Quoti- 
dienne of the morrow remarked naively, " Une 



MARSHAL MACMAJION. 



ceiitaine de duels a clos cette memorable soiree ; 
mais nous croyons qu'il n'y a eu de d(^nouement 
fatal que dans sept cas seulemenV 

Brouglit up amid gunpowdery scenes of this 
kind — in the which he was always an active and 
foremost performer — is it to be wondered at that 
the young Maurice de MacMahon should have 
started in the army as a Legitimist fire-eater of the 
fiercest kind ? Handsome, brave, and well con- 
nected, he was placed at once on the staff, and the 
Revolution of '30 found him fighting in the Al- 
gerian Expedition. He did not, however, give in 
his resignation because an Orleans had succeeded 
a Bourbon, but it is probable that he kept the 
worship of the Bourbons quietly locked up in his 
heart. There was a very numerous class of officers 
like him who swore allegiance to the new state of 
things, accepted promotion and favours from the 
Government, and even fought well for it. But 
they never loved nor respected the dummy form 
of rule which was neither fish nor flesh, neither 
monarchy nor freedom, and which dragged on a 
precarious existence without dignity abroad or 
safety at home for eighteen years. A French 



22 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

soldier can understand royalism, and lie can appre- 
ciate republicanism ; but bis frankness and liis 
innate good sense fret under a system composed of 
continual compromises and fictions. People wonder 
tbat tbe Orleanist monarchy, so sedulously nur- 
tured and propped from '30 to '48, should have 
collapsed in a couple of days ; but it would collapse 
again, and in half the time, should the French be 
ever so foolish as to restore it. The ties of tradi- 
tion and personal respect for the Sovereign which 
attach Constitutional monarchy to the English 
soil are wholly wanting in France. Constitutional 
monarchy there is an anachronism and an absur- 
dity. From the moment when the French de- 
finitely discarded their old Royal family in 1830, 
upon finding that it refused to adapt itself to 
modern ideas, Republicanism became the only form 
of government compatible with the well-being and 
stability of the country. It would have been an 
immense benefit for France if officers of Mac- 
Mahon's stamp had perceived this and resolutely 
cast in their lot with the Republicans of 1848. 
But in 1848 MacMahon was a colonel, an ofiicer 
of the Legion of Honour, a Conservative, and the 



MARSHAL MACMAHON. 23 

rest of it He had watclied the fall of Louis 
Philippe with silent contempt, and attributed it all 
to "Liberalism;" and though he suffered himself 
to be promoted to a generalship by the new 
Government — for one should never decline favours 
— yet he assuredly clung to the hope that France 
might soon be blessed with a " regime of order " 
again, which generally seems to mean a regime 
that has been tried before and has given fitful 
order to the streets by introducing disorder into 
the public finances, into the public morals, and 
into the public ideas of international amity. There 
is nothing in which political croakers more excel 
than in flinging stones at a Government like the 
Provisional one of '48, accusing it of weakness, 
and shouting " Booby !" to it because it was 
knocked over. How many are there who care to 
remember that this Government of '48, composed 
of honest men who had not a thought but for their 
country's good, was assailed by fifty thousand 
priests and twice that number of nobles, who sowed 
hatred against it in the provinces ; by selfish 
myriads of shopkeepers, who, not having had the 
courage to maintain the dynasty they professed to 



24 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

love, were now wliining for its return in tlie name 
of damaged trade ; and by gangs of Bonapartists 
working in the dark with money and falsehoods to 
stir up all the bad, envious, and ignorant blood of 
the country, for their own purposes ? And to sup- 
port it this Government was forced to depend on 
what ? — an army, whose officers, like MacMahon, 
vouchsafed it a sulky allegiance, and were never 
tired of clamouring after the least street riot, " Ah, 
yes, this all comes of liberty !" 

The re-establishment of the Empire found 
General MacMahon quite ready to swear a fourth 
oath of fealty, and to accept such good things as 
Providence by the hands of the Imperial dynasty 
might cast in his way. He would have preferred 
a Bourbon restoration ; but Henri Y. being unen- 
terprising. Napoleon III. was no bad substitute. 
There would be no freedom now, or any nonsense 
of that sort. The descendant of a man who had 
been proscribed for his faith would no longer have 
his ears shocked by hearing other men proclaim their 
faiths and their convictions. Napoleon was to be 
everything, and he — MacMahon — in common Avith 
iill other gentlemen and plebeians of France, nothing 



MARSHAL MACMAHON. 



"but a cypher, prohibited from speaking or thinking 
for himself Ennobling consummation ! And how 
worthy a one to be fought for and prayed for in 
the name of order ! MacMahon was at this time 
a vigorous-looking gentleman, with clear blue eyes, 
a firm mouth, and silent ways. He had little to 
say on any subject ; but he was regarded as the 
most chivalrous among officers ; for, as the world 
is ordered at present, a man who would not abet 
the swindling of a penny at cards may consent to 
aid in cheating the liberties of a whole nation from 
it without ceasing to be the soul of honour. Then 
MacMahon was a good general, and indeed, for his 
own comfort, perhaps too good a one ; for, finding 
himself suddenly Duke of Magenta, after un- 
doubtedly saving Napoleon from a premature 
Sedan, he became by the same stroke a man upon 
Avhom the Imperial Government resolved to keep 
its eye, and whom it lost no time in despatching 
to Algiers, so as to get him out of the way. Poor 
Algiers ! The new-fledged Duke and Marshal could 
not ascribe it to Liberalism if everything went 
wrong here, as he had seen it do in France under 
the Republic. Most conscientiously did he try 



26 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC, 

guillotine and rifle, admonitions to tlie press and 
imprisonment of journalists. Despite these en- 
couragements, tlie ill-conditioned colony would 
persist in not thriving ; and after six years of ducal 
management Algeria was beginning to loom up 
before France as a dismal problem to be faced, 
when, luckily or unluckily, the " orderly " policy of 
that great slayer of disorder, the Emperor, turned 
tlie attention of the country to unpleasant subjects 
nearer home. 

The accession to power of the OUivier Cabinet 
was the pretext chosen for abandoning the idea of 
founding an Arab kingdom under military rule, 
and MacMahon resigned the Governor-Generalship. 
On the declaration of war with Prussia he was 
appointed to the command of the 1st Corps d'Armee, 
charged with the defence of Alsace ; and on the &th 
of August, 1870, was defeated between Woerth and 
Reichsoffen by the Crown Prince of Prussia, and 
forced to abandon the line of the Yosges. He 
had 35,000 men under his orders, the Prince was 
at the head of 75,000, and MacMahon's disaster 
was complete. He lost 4,000 prisoners, thirty-six 
cannons, and two standards. His subsequent retreat 



MARSHAL MACMAHON. 27 

to Nancy with only 18,000 men was so ably con- 
ducted, however, that the Emperor confided to him 
the command-in-chief of the new levies then mus- 
tering at Chalons. Unluckily, he was thwarted by 
much interference, and tied down to act on a plan 
of campaign which is now allowed to have been 
ill-considered. Having received formal orders to 
march to the relief of Bazaine at Metz, he was 
driven by the rapid advance of the Crown Prince 
into the trap of Sedan, and on the 1st of September, 
early in the morning, after being dangerously 
wounded in the thigh, resigned his command to 
General Ducrot. He cannot, therefore, be held 
responsible for the mischief that followed. After 
the Emperor's surrender, MacMahon was specially 
authorised by the King of Prussia to reside at 
Pourru-aux-Bois, a little village on the frontiers of 
Belgium, but as soon as his wound was healed he 
voluntarily shared the captivity of his troops in Ger- 
many. He returned to Paris on the 1 8th of March, 
1 8 7 1 , at the outbreak of the Communist insurrection. 
In the beginning of April he was appointed by a 
decree of the Executive power to lead the Versailles 
army, and on the 28 th of May, after some days of des- 



28 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

perate figliting, made himself master of tlie capital, 
and issued a mild proclamatic-n. At tlie supple- 
mentary elections of tlie 2nd of July following, 
several departments (among others the Seine) 
offered to elect him their representative, and a 
strong party in the Assembly desired to make him 
Vice-President of the Republic ; but he declined 
these honours, and refused to have anything to do 
with politics. 

And now, these subjects having been disposed 
of, MacMahon stands at Thiers' s right, with his 
hand on his sword and his lips enigmatically 
sealed. But why this silence ? Does MacMahon 
ignore the fact that a word from him at this junc- 
ture, when France is struggling desperately to re- 
gain her health and strength, would fall as the 
most precious of balms to heal her wounds ? 
What would be the effect on the credit, on the 
hopes, on the prospects of France, if MacMahon 
were to step out at this moment and declare him- 
self a Republican ? There need be no abjuration, 
no infidelity, in such a statement. That man is 
no renegade who, considering his country's fall, 
opens his eyes to the causes which led to it. On 



MARSHAL MACMAHON. 29 

one side is a great and generous nation over- 
wlielmed, and yet prevented from rising and 
wielding her might by the unpatriotic machina- 
tions of a horde of Pretenders ; on the other, there 
is a man who, respected, and justly so, ^.or his 
bravery and domestic virtues, has only to say a 
word to draw almost the entire French army after 
him in loyalty to the Republican flag, which is not 
the banner of a party or of a faction, but that of a 
whole people. Why does not MacMahon say this 
word ? He surely does not suppose that the title 
of High Constable which a Bourbon Restoration 
might give him, could rival that which would 
attach to his name as one of the pacificators of 
France and founders of French freedom ? 

Marie-Edmd-Patrice-Maurice de MacMahon was 
born at Sully, near Autun, in the department of 
Saone-et-Loire, on the 13th of July, 1808. He 
descended from an ancient family of Irish Catholics, 
who followed the fortunes of the Stuarts, and took 
refuge in Burgundy. His father was one of the 
few personal friends of Charles X., who remained 
king of France just long enough to open the great 
gates of life for the future marshal, and show him 



30 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

the waj?- through.. He first fleshed his sword and 
won the cross of honour at Algiers. He was aide- 
de-camp to General Achard at the siege of Antwerp, 
and was promoted to be a captain at twenty-five. 
His military services have been more numerous and 
splendid than those of any living officer in the 
French army. He was at the storming of Con- 
stantino, in 1837, was wounded there, and behaved 
with signal gallantry. His courage, indeed, was a 
proverb. Having been ordered on one occasion to 
carry an order from General Changarnier to the 
colonel of his regiment, which was separated from 
the corps d'armde by a vast horde of Bedouins, he 
Avas told to take a squadron of dragoons with him. 
" They are too few or too many," he replied : " too 
many to pass unseen, too few to beat the enemy. 
I Avill go alone." And he went. It was he who 
led the famous assault on the Malakoff, which 
decided the issue of the Crimean War ; and Marshal 
Pelissier, seeing his extreme danger, twice sent him 
orders by an aide-de-camp to retire from the peri- 
lous position he had taken up. " Let me alone," 
roared MacMahon at the second message ; " I am 
master of my own skin." It was he again who put 



MARSHAL MACMAHON. 31 

down tlie dangerous expedition of the Kabyles, in 
1857, and drove them from their mountain fast- 
nesses, which had previously been thought inacces- 
sible. It was he who won the day at Magenta, and 
turned defeat into victory. Finally, it was he who 
put down the terrible civil war which devastated 
France after her defeat by the Germans, and who 
saved Paris from destruction by fire. Such deeds 
have no faint claim to a nation's gratitude, and 
France has given him all she had to bestow. It is 
not going too far to say that he is the most popular 
man in the country. He lives a retired, unosten- 
tatious life, and though he displayed extraordinary 
pomp when sent a few years ago on an embassy to 
Prussia, his manners are unpretending, and his 
dress plain. He seldom appears in uniform, and 
the only mark of distinction he wears is the red 
ribbon. His most marked characteristics are a love 
of children and a fondness for study. He made 
his triumphal entry into Milan with a little girl, 
who had offered him a nosegay, perched upon his 
holsters. He is probably as well versed in mili- 
tary history as Faidherbe, and is often busy with 
a child and a map upon his knees. His favourite 



32 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

amusement is riding. In society lie is sliy, almost 
sad, and seems ill at ease. He likes to saunter 
about the boulevard, with bis hands in his pockets 
and a cigar eternally in his mouth, when he is not 
on horseback ; and he is seen to most advantage 
at home surrounded by his family. 



M. GAMBETTA. 

A NYONE who lias passed tlirougli tlie Rue 
de rAncienne Com^die in Paris, may have 
noticed an old house with a basso-relievo high on 
its facade, and opposite it a cafd with a low front. 
The house is all that remains of the Theatre 
Frangais of a hundred years ago ; and the coffee- 
house is the distinguished Caf^ Procope, where the 
wits and encyclopedians of the 18th century drank 
mulled claret and talked treason. The waiter 
will still show you in the room to the left a red 
marble table whereon, he asserts, M. de Voltaire 
used to write ; and, though one may believe this 
or not as one pleases — and perhaps it is better 
not to please, seeing how numerous are the Ameri- 
can tourists with a taste for relics- — yet it is a fact 
that Yoltaire did write here, that d'Alembert, 
Diderot, the two Crebillons, and Rousseau, were 
paying customers, and that Marmontel, to outwit 
D 



34 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

the jDolice spies, wlio used to prowl in as tliey liave 
done since and may do again, liad invented for 
liimself and friends a clioice vocabulary, in wliich 
the names margot, javotte, and jeanneton did duty 
for soul, religion, and freedom. The lustre of the 
Cafe Procope has waned in the present century, 
hut five years ago any stranger entering it of an 
evening might have seen there a young man who 
is, perhaps, destined to set as deep a mark upon 
history as even good M. de Marmontel. He was 
an almost briefless barrister then — a dark Italian- 
blooded young Frenchman, blind with one eye, 
not over well dressed, but with a voice as sounding 
as brass. It was the magic of the man, this voice. 
When silent he looked insignificant enough, but 
once he began to speak, the rather Bohemian crew 
of friends round him awoke to admiration. The 
desultory customers scattered about the other 
tables would prick their ears, and the landlord 
would hurry up in a scared fashion, to beg the 

impetuous orator to speak lower, because 

and here a whisper. But he witli the ringing 
voice would shrug his shoulders at the "because," 
even when there was M. Pietri's name tacked on 



M. GAMBETTA. 35 



to it. He held, the evening newspaper in his 
hands with the report of a speech delivered by 
some one of that twenty-three — say Jules Favre 
or Ernest Picard — who breasted in the Corps 
Le'gislatif the mob of M. Rouher's blatant hench- 
men, and, until the speech had been read through 
from end to end with sonorous bravos at the tell- 
ing points, there was no stopping him with dread 
of eavesdroppers. Then when the paper was laid 
down more drinking of beer would, ensue than 
perhaps the matter strictly required, and. the 
young barrister would blaze out into flashing com- 
ments on what he had read, adding what Ifie would 
do and say if the chance were afforded him. Nor 
did his Bohemian friends smile at this. Each 
man among them felt in himself that limitless 
confidence which impecuniosity begets, and they 
were also firmly persuaded that if their companion 
could only find the opportunity, he would soon 
set men's tongues rattling about him. Their com- 
panion did find the opportunity ; and next day 
the name of Gambetta was famous from one end 
of France to the other. 

At a time when men walked in fear of the gen- 



36 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

darmerie and of Judge Delesvaux, lie had the 
courage to say, speaking in the Court of this very 
Delesvaux, that France had been waylaid by Louis 
Napoleon as by a highwayman and felled sense- 
less. Rochefort had already belled the cat in a 
similar fashion with his Lanterne, and so had 
Prdvost Paradol, yet earlier, with that article 
which entailed the suppression of the Courrier du 
Bimanche, and which likened France to a great 
lady who stoops to live with a groom. But 
Rochefort and Paradol were journalists — men 
whom one could silence by closing their presses ; 
whereas Gambetta was an advocate — that is, a man 
whom it would take trouble to gag, and who, 
besides, came at a moment when the Opposition 
was in need of a champion of a more vigorous sort 
than those it possessed. Jules Favre was all 
heart, impassionate but not aggressive enough ; 
Pelletan spoke like an enthusiast, Jules Simon like 
a professor, Picard like a wit, and Thiers as a 
statesman. This Gambetta was an athlete. He 
disdained all the classic attitudes of rhetoric, flung 
his arms about him, banged his fist down on the 
first thing that came uppermost — ^book, hat, or 



M. GAMBETTA. 



desk — rang his voice througli the wildest changes, 
from the roar to the falsetto, and would have 
seemed to a deaf man the maddest contortionist 
out at large. But if you listened to him you 
were not likely to forget it. His oratory had all 
the energy, fire, and defiance of youth in it. He 
never hesitated for a word, spoke headlong, every 
one of his phrases being coloured with that pic- 
turesque imagery of the south, always vivid, 
always new, and soaring at times to surprising 
heights in beauty of sentiment. There is no 
French parallel to that speech uttered on a grimy 
December afternoon of 1868 in the small Court of 
Correctional Police. The affair was an unimportant 
one — a prosecution of a newspaper for opening 
its columns to a subscription for erecting a monu- 
ment to a victim of the cou^ t^'e'^ct^— but Gambetta 
raised the case to the level of a State trial, and 
his harangue was an impeachment of the Second 
Empire such as acted like a clarion upon the 
entire Liberal army, and nerved it for the electoral 
campaign which was to be the last struggle but 
one of Imperialism. Yet a few weeks more, and 
Gambetta, no longer briefless, unknown, or ill- 



38 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

clad, was being favoured witli something like a 
triumphal ovation by the population of Toulouse, 
whose pet organ, I! Emianci'pation, he had come to 
defend ; and yet another few weeks, and with his 
name staring the public in flaming posters from all 
the dead walls of Paris and Marseilles, he had 
begun his twofold canvass as leader of the 
" Irreconcilables." Not a trim word this, but one 
of his own invention, and passably significant, if one 
remembers that it meant war without quarter to 
the Government then established. Others said, 
" Let us rally to the Empire if it grants us what 
we want ; " which, being interpreted, signified, 
" Here is an adventurer who stole our liberties 
from us eighteen years ago ; but, as he has 
managed to keep them so long, this is surely the 
moment for shaking hands with him if he will 
only give a few of them back." Gambetta de- 
clined to indorse this manly form of reasoning. 
He laid down the axiom that a perjured usurper 
should be able to rely upon the support of no man 
of principle ; and these views he trumpeted to 
the four ends of France, greatly to the chagrin of 
all those good casuists who are for compounding 



M. GAMBETTA. 39 



felonies and murders so long only as they are 
political— tliat is, so long as tliey extend to the 
rights of millions and the lives of thousands, in- 
stead of to the lives and purses of one man or 
two. Whether Gambetta always propounded his 
ideas with temper afid judgment is another ques- 
tion. A man who goes stumping will naturally 
catch the tricks of the stump, and our canvasser 
had not proceeded far before he had promised his 
future electors more goods and privileges, more 
freedom and wages, than even the millennium can 
fairly be expected to give us. But then there is 
this to be said for Gambetta, that even if he had 
vowed that every Frenchman should have a larded 
fowl and a bottle of Pomard every morning and 
evening on the establishment of the Republic, it 
would have been with some conscientious plan in 
his head for bringing this savoury consummation 
to pass. 

When one talked to Gambetta before the war, 
and whilst he was yet only a deputy, one was 
chiefly struck by his exuberant frankness. Even 
when he had just come doAvn panting and dishe- 
velled from the Tribune, after some such thun- 



40 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

dering speecli as that where lie cried to OUivier — 
" We accept you and your Constitutionalism as a 
bridge to the Republic, but nothing more " — even 
in such moments there was a total absence of jyose 
or aJEfectation in his ways. It was rather too 
much the contrary. A remnant of Bohemianism 
clung to him. In alluding to a political antago- 
nist, the parliamentary epithets were not those 
which rose to his tongue soonest. He laughed 
loud, gripped one's hand rather than shook it, and 
would here and there launch from his seat, on 
startled M. Schneider's extreme left, some inter- 
ruption in round vernacular, which would cause 
even those discreet persons, the ushers with silver 
chains, to jump in unison. When the debates 
waxed warm, the milder members of the Left were 
generally to be seen pulling him back entreat- 
ingly by the coat-tails, and the bourgeois in the 
galleries, who watched these things, * would go 
home muttering in horror, " II manque absolument 
de tenue ; ce n'est pas un homme serieux." The 
Gambetta of 1872 is a very different man. Power 
has passed through his hands, blood under his 
eyes, and calumny over his head. He will still 



31. GAMBETTA. 41 



bound to his feet like an attacked lion, and shout 
in vibrating accents, " That is a lie ! " when some 
venomous shaft is spitefully shot in his direction 
by a member of the Right, but in ordinary re- 
spects he is now as serieux as any grocer in 
the Rue St. Denis can wish, and he even dresses 
with some care, which seems to be a great relief 
to a large number of worthy people who are 
resigned to the notion of his becoming President, 
but would be appalled at the prospect of his pre- 
siding over them without gloves. But will Gam- 
betta be President ? Amid the hurricane of abuse 
let loose upon him by the Bonapartists, and igno- 
rantly swelled by the yelping of those who yelp 
whenever they see anybody else give tongue — 
amid all this it seemed for a moment as if the 
ex-Dictator were going to be for ever swept away. 
But politics are a thing of ebbs and flows, and 
many a Frenchman (even among Gambetta's ene- 
mies) is beginning silently to reflect that the 
Dictatorship of Tours may not perhaps be judged 
by future generations as it has been by those 
impartial prints which take their cue from Chisel- 
hurst. That Gambetta committed blunders, sim- 



42 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

ply proves that lie is like otlier statesmen past 
and future ; but it would be a,t least candid to 
admit that, entrusted to a vicious or heartless 
man, the power wliicb lie wielded would have 
served to remove not a few heads still simpering 
very comfortably on their owners' shoulders. Nay, 
one may as well go the whole length and say that 
if Gambetta had taken a few of those ex-Impe- 
rialist mayors, prefects, and councillors-general, 
who spent their time in exhorting the peasantry 
not to fight " for the Republic and for those in- 
fidels who wanted to restore '92," and treated 
them as any Dictator of a hundred years ago, 
or as any Bonaparte of our own day would have 
treated them, he would have done not a little 
towards making his administration work smoothly, 
and adding to his own fame for statesmanship. 
That he neglected this means of promoting his 
reputation, and that, despite the foulest aspersions 
(levelled at him by all those who had least claim 
to throw stones of this sort), he left power no 
richer than he had entered it, is a fact which 
answers many calumnies. 

Of M. Gambetta' s antecedents little is known, 



M. GAMBETTA. 43 



though much is told. He came into this world of 
electors at the small tipsy town of Cahors, on the 
Lot, the 30th of October, 1838. It is said and 
printed that his family were of Genoese origin; but 
as he would probably have done quite as well 
without illustrious ancestors as with them, his 
friends have various theories on the subject, some 
inclining to the belief that he is his own father. 
He was inscribed on the French Law List as a 
member of the Paris Bar in 1859. He is not 
considered a learned man ; but he has, neverthe- 
less, acquired an amount of information that 
learned men would find useful. It is customary 
to think of him as a political Hercules, but his 
health is uncertain, and his physical strength not 
great. With respect to his vigour of mind, a 
curious anecdote is told. It is asserted that, 
being placed as a child in the custody of some 
persons he did not like, he wrote to his father 
to inform him, that unless he were immediately 
taken home he should put out one of his 
eyes, and as his father did not receive this com- 
munication with the respectful attention it should 
have commanded, he actually carried his threat 



44 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC, 



into execution. That is tlie way in which tradition 
accounts for the loss of his eye ; and his hkenesses 
are generally taken in profile. 

After a brief career as an advocate he was elected 
deputy for Paris and Marseilles. He chose to sit 
for Paris, but his (electoral campaign had been too 
much for him, and he was laid up for a long time 
with a painful affection of the larynx. His first 
parliamentary speech worthy of note was a furious 
attack on the Plebiscitum ; his next, a protest 
against the arrest of Henri Rochefort. He took 
little part in the opposition organized against the 
Prussian war, and refused the advances made to 
him by the International to head a popular insur- 
rection when the Emperor had left Paris. After 
the catastrophe of Sedan, Gambetta's place was 
clearly marked out, and he became one of the most 
active members of the Government of National 
Defence. It was he who signed the decree con- 
voking the Electoral Colleges ; it was he who 
ordered the renewal of the Municipal Councils, 
and granted to Paris the same rights as other 
French Communes. On the 7th of October he 
was appointed one of the delegates of the Pro- 



If. GAMBETTA. 45 



visional Government at Tours, quitted Paris in a 
balloon, and for nearly four months took all the 
powers and responsibilities of supreme authority 
into his own hands. He united the offices of Mi- 
nisters of War, Interior, and Finance in his proper 
person ; and amazed the world by his activity. 
He raised armies out of nothing, and found money 
by magic to pay them. He resisted all attempts of 
his besieged colleagues to induce him to hold terms 
with the enemy, characterised their endeavours to 
make peace as " culpable and frivolous ; " and 
would have fought on as long as he lived had not 
shrewd M. Jules Simon contrived to outwit him, 
and frustrate his designs. At the close of the war 
he was elected deputy for six departments, and 
subsequently for three other departments. He 
now sits for the Bouches du Rhone, and is (Thiers 
alone excepted) the most prominent statesman in 
France. 

He still lives a good deal in the street ; he may 
be generally seen and heard surrounded by a 
devoted band of friends, who expect great things 
when he next comes into power, though probably 
he will be reluctantly compelled to disappoint them. 



M. GEEYY. 

OINCE the day wlien M. Boissy d'Anglas, whilst 
presiding over the Convention, had the head 
of the representative Eeraud thrust under his face 
at the top of a pike — from that day to this the 
Presidency of a French Assembly has never been 
in any sense a sinecure ; and M, Grdvy has some 
reason to congratulate himself that he should not 
only have directed a turbulent Legislature with 
firmness, but that he should have secured an 
uncontested name for impartiality. There are 
two ways of being impartial : we may either 
be so by incurring the reproaches of all parties, 
or by satisfying all. M. Dupin, the most cele- 
brated of M. Grdvy's predecessors (he was Pre- 
sident under the Second Eepublic, 1848-51), 
preferred the former course ; M. Gr^vy has se- 
lected the latter. Another difference between 
these two lies in thek manner of presiding. M. 



M. GREW. 47 



Dupin, wlio was a species of liuman porcupine 
bristling with epigrams and unpleasant to tilt 
against, kept the members in order by using his 
tongue as a bludgeon. He was also a humorous 
President. Being in the chair one day when his 
intimate personal friend Berryer was pouring 
denunciations on one of Prince Louis Napoleon's 
devoted ministers, he shouted, " Monsieur Berryer, 
if you continue to sj)eak like this I shall be 
obliged to call you to order ; " then, leaning over 
his desk, he whispered in the orator's ear, " Pitch 
into him ! " (" Taj)e dessus ! ") M. Grevy may, 
perhaps, have as much lurking humour as M. 
Dupin, but he does not show it. A short dapper 
man, with a face smooth shaved all but a trim 
fringing of grey whisker, thin firm lips, a square 
bald head, grey eyes, and a peremptory voice, 
he is the incarnation of dignity and presidential 
authority. Besides he has no need to resort to. 
strong language or witty sallies to make himself 
respected ; respect is paid him unanimously by 
right of a career which has been spotless. M. 
Grevy is not one of those men who conscientiously 
alter their opinions to suit their changes of 



48 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

position, and who after a long life of such 
healthy see-sawing cannot move a step to the 
right or left without explaining away a whole 
ream of speeches delivered against the very step 
in question. You might take stock of all the 
political sentiments Gr^vy ever uttered ; there is 
not one that would testify against him. Such 
as he is now, such Avas he twenty, thirty, forty 
years ago ; and we may almost contemplate as 
a phenomenon this Frenchman who never sang 
Hosannah on Louis Philippe's path, who spoke 
of Napoleon III. as he deserved, who thought 
Guizot a pedagogue, and Emile OUivier a poor 
creature ; and who yet was always prepared to 
admit, rather to the scandal of the fanatics among 
his set, that there were plenty of rascals in the 
Eepublican as in other parties. 

At the Revolution of '30, Grevy, then a Latin 
Quarter student, aged seventeen, took part in the 
fighting, and was one of the captors of the Baby- 
lone Barracks. He stood fire with cool bravery, 
forgot to brag about his doings, and went back to 
his books with the ambition of becoming a suc- 
cessful lawyer rather than a politician. But cir- 



M. GREVY. 49 



cumstances decided it otlierwise. He was retained 
to defend prosecuted journalists and conspirators ; 
and thus a man wlio should have grown into a 
learned legist, skilled in abstruse cases, and by- 
and-by into a judge, was diverted from what was 
no doubt his instinctive bent. However, he was 
never a sensational pleader. Clients were asto- 
nished to see that he thought much more of get- 
ting them acquitted than of raising himself a 
pedestal out of their briefs. He argued quietly 
and never bawled ; there were even cases where, 
suspecting his clients of seeking to make them- 
selves a charlatanic fame out of their prosecutions, 
he told them so with a frankness which was more 
new than complimentary. The events of 1848 
found Jules Grevy in possession of a reputation 
for sense such as is not acquired every day of the 
week ; and the new-born Republic sent him to his 
native department, the Jura, to act as Chief Com- 
missioner. There were no more difficult functions 
on earth to exercise than these. The provinces 
had been so scared by the unexpected collapse of 
the throne in which they trusted, that the arrival 
of a Republican Commissioner was everywhere 



50 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

regarded as a direct visitation from the Evil One. 
It must be added tliat tlie majority of commis- 
sioners neglected nothing to keep up this favour- 
able impression. Ignorant and fussy young bar- 
risters, bangers-on whom tlie Government had 
imprudently despatched into the country so as to 
get them away from Paris, and whom it hastened 
to recall when it was too late to repair the mis- 
chief they had done — ^they raged about the depart- 
ments, spreading disturbance and consternation 
around them. Even the Jura, which was then, as 
it is now, the best educated among the depart- 
ments, took alarm at Eepublicanism preached in 
this fashion, and received M. Grevy more than 
coldly. A few days, however, set everything to 
rights. The new Commissioner omitted to serve 
the cause he had at heart by declaring everywhere 
how great a man Robespierre was. He kept aloof 
from party demonstrations, treated all opinions 
•with respect, and snubbed, with a contempt that 
somewhat astonished them, those gentlemen who 
are the drones and gadflies of Eepublicanism. 
The Jura, content and prosperous under such 
management, which would have saved France a 



M. GREW. 



great deal of trouble liad there been eigbty-six 
Grevys to bestow it upon all the departments 
instead of upon a single one, testified its gratitude 
by returning the Commissioner to the Constituent 
Assembly by 65,150 votes. 

By this time Grdvy was a well-known character. 
Stamped in public esteem as a man of will, he was 
elected at once Yice-President of the Assembly 
and member of the Committee of Justice, and he 
took his seat on the Left of the House, where he 
soon achieved a position apart among those who 
were for giving France an intelligent and acceptable 
Republic — not that fierce and chafing thing made 
up of prickly laws, which sits upon a community 
like a hair shirt. It would have been a useful lesson 
for the rural intellect if a few of those monarchical 
bumpkins who were then being indoctrinated into 
the perils of a commonwealth by Prince Louis 
Napoleon's honest agents, had been brought up to 
Paris by some of the cheap trains which began to 
run at about this period, and been made to listen 
to M. Grevy's speeches. Their opaque but King- 
loving minds might have been led to see that 
there could be nothing very dangeraus in measures 



52 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

advocated by so calm and conservative-looking 
a legislator as this one from the Jura. Not 
that Grdvy, however, was ever half-hearted in 
his advocacies. He supported radical reforms, 
would have nothing to say to party coalitions, 
which are like the Tnariages de raison in private 
life, and generally terminate quite as stormily. 
On all important occasions his vote was opposed 
to that of M. Thiers, in whose liberalism, by the 
way, he then felt but a limited degree of con- 
fidence. His famous amendment with regard to 
the Presidency set the seal, as it were, to his 
opinions. Mistrusting both General Cavaignac and 
Louis Napoleon, he moved that the Chief of the 
Executive be styled " President of the Council of 
Ministers," be elected for no definite time, but be 
removable at the will of the House. Had this 
amendment been voted, Prince Louis would have 
remained President a couple of sessions at most, 
but it is doubtful whether Republicanism would 
have benefited by it, for the next President would 
certainly have been the Prince de Joinville. How- 
ever, the amendment was lost by 643 votes to 
158 : the Presidency lapsed into Bonapartist 



M. GREW. S3 



hands, and three years later M. Gr^vy, driven from 
political life by the cowp d'etat, which he had been 
one of the first to foresee, resumed his barrister's 
gown, and was little heard of, except in the law 
courts, till 1868. Re-elected in that year by his 
old friends of the Jura, his majority over the 
official candidate was so crushing that it roused a 
panic at the Tuileries. But the new deputy did 
not return to the House as a speaking member. 
Not fond of wasting words where no practical 
result was to be hoped for, he*let the officially 
packed Chamber legislate as it pleased, and during 
the next two years his name was brought promi- 
nently before the public on two occasions only : 
first, when he voted in 1870 against the return of 
the Orleans Princes ; and secondly, when he de- 
clined to participate in the Revolution of the 4th 
of September. In both these emergencies he was 
at variance with the Liberal party. The Liberals 
voted for the Orleans Princes ; Grevy refused to 
do so, alleging that the presence of pretenders on 
French soil added strength to Royalist factions, 
and made the prospects of Republicanism more 
remote. He became President of the meetings in 



54 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

the Eiie de la Sourdierc, wMcli took the name of 
the Gauche Fermde, in opposition to the Gauche 
Ouverte, presided over by M. Ernest Picard ; and 
decHned to accept any compromise with the Im- 
perialists. He offered a determined resistance to 
the Plebiscitum, and met all offers of public employ- 
ment with a clear and resolute negative. Regard- 
ing the 4th September he was equally explicit. 
Opposed to violence in every shape, he could draw 
no distinction between popular or autocratical ille- 
galities. The members of the Corps L^gislatif, 
said he, were many of them elected under pressure, 
but they were the people's representatives never- 
theless, and it was a citizen's duty to accept their 
will as law till a new Assembly was returned. These 
sentiments, which were shared to the full by M. 
Thiers, establfshed between the two a political friend- 
ship which has been on the increase ever since — 
despite the kind endeavours of mutual friends to 
convert these two first citizens of the Republic into 
rivals. 

M. Grevy, who was chosen a third time for the 
Jura in 1871, has now two bugbears — Monarchy 
and M. Gambetta j but the former he has perhaps 



M. GREW. 



less dread of tlian tlie latter. He does not like 
M. Gambetta. The fervid, go-aliead, often reck- 
less oratory of the popular Tribune not unnaturally 
grates on the cold, logical, and slightly punctilious 
mind of the " French Aristides," as many term 
him. Whilst Gambetta was at Tours struggling 
like ten ordinary Ministers against Prussian force, 
Bonapartist intrigues, and bureaucratic red tape 
combined, Grevy was among those who insisted 
that an Assembly should be convoked to give the 
Republican Government a legal sanction. Gam- 
betta r3fused, adding in the heat of argument that 
the time was one for acting, not for deliberating — 
though deliberating was not the exact word he 
used. Whereat M. Gr^vy retorted, " Do what you 
may, you will never be a Republican ; you are 
fated to die in the skin of a rebel." It is well 
known that these words have been forgotten by 
neither of the disputants ; and the only occasions 
on which M. Gr^vy ever departs from his strict 
impartiality as a President are those when M. 
Gambetta is speaking. Fearful of letting his per- 
sonal feelings sway his judgment, he allows the 
ex-Dictator to say things which he would scarcely 



56 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

tolerate from another quarter ; and on the days 
when it is certified beforehand that M. Gambetta 
is to ascend the tribune, he often leaves the task 
of chairmanship to one of his Vice-Presidents. 
Political rancours are, however, the shortest lived 
x)f all, and it requires no divination to foresee that 
if the Republic escapes being strangled either by 
avowed enemies or by indiscreet friends, Grevy 
and Gambetta may both of them at some future 
date sit side by side in a Republican Senate as 
ex-Presidents of the Commonwealth. Jules Grevy 
is, of all others, the man whose public virtues, 
talents, and private austerity best fit him to be M. 
Thiers' s immediate successor ; and after him Gam- 
betta, whose blood will j)robably have grown more 
tepid by that time, may be installed in the Presi- 
dential chair without any chance of his entailing 
a fall of all the securities on 'Change. Is it pre- 
sumption to dream so far into the future ? Perhaps ; 
but one may be pardoned for feeling confidence in 
coming events when one reflects that so long as M. 
Grevy is to the fore the Republic need not perish 
for want of that rare thing — a brave and steady 
man at the helm. 



M. GREVY. 



FranQois Paul Jules Grevy was born at Mont- 
sous- Yaudrez, in the Department of the Jura, on 
the 15th of August, 1813. He was educated at 
the college of Poligny, and studied law in Paris. 
Very good men have not many marked days in 
their lives. They are too wise to go a hunting 
after the impossible ; and therefore meet with few 
aggressive obstacles. They do their duty without 
making a stir about it, as though it were among 
the necessary offices of life which should be 
performed in silence. They think there is no 
need to be noisy. Therefore they shock nobody, 
make few personal enemies, and are seldom 
maligned. They do not offer pay or place to any 
town crier for advertisements ; and that is the 
reason why no one thinks it worth while to get up 
early in the morning and praise them with a loud 
voice. Their existence is like the fertilising flow 
of a placid river in the summer time, and glides 
noiselessly to the sea which is at the end of its 
course. 



M. BAETHELEMY ST. HILAIRE. 

A GOOD sort of Turk being on tlie trudge to 
Constantinople, where he purposed presenting 
a petition to the Sultan, overtook an Armenian, 
whom he naturally began to question as to the 
character of the monarch under whom they both 
had the happiness to live. The Armenian, who 
was a person fond of kings and of big people 
generally, instantly swelled his voice to recount 
the praises of his Sovereign. Ho was this and he 
was that ; his life had been as the course of a 
mudless stream ; perfection was too meagre a term 
to describe his virtues. The Turk with the peti- 
tion was pleased to hear all this : but when the 
other had finished he said, with a thoughtful wag 
of the head, " Yes, but how about his pipe-bearer ? 
for I have noticed that the doings of the great 
depend much less upon their own intentions than 
upon those of their favoured servants, so that I 



M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE. 59 

would almost sooner liave to deal with a spiteful 
Sultan who had a benevolent pipe-bearer than with 
a Sultan who was merciful and yet had a pipe- 
bearer who was vicious." 

At this present writing there must be more 
than one petitioner in France who is reasoning like 
the Armenian, and who feels much less concerned 
to know what reception his petition will meet with 
at the hands of M. Thiers than of the effect it will 
produce on M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, who is not 
M. Thiers' s pipe-bearer, but his chief secretary, 
privy councillor, and right-hand man, besides act- 
ing as leading whip for the Government party, and 
more or less as editor of the Journal Officiel. 
These are many functions for one man to dis- 
charge, especially for a man who loves Aristotle 
more than politics, and has arrived at an age when 
it is pleasanter to see others bestir themselves 
than to do so oneself. But M. St. Hilaire is not 
one of those men who seem to grow old. The 
pupils who sat under him when he was first 
appointed to succeed Yictor Cousin, in 1838, as 
Professor of Latin and Greek Philosophy at the 
College de France ; the memorialists who inter- 



6o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

viewed liim when lie was unpaid secretary to tlie 
Provisional Government of 1848; tlie engineers 
who were amazed by his knowledge of Sanscrit 
and Hindoo literature when he went with them as 
commissioner to study the practicability of a Suez 
Canal — all these, and many others, would now find 
M. St. Hilaire little changed. A tall man with an 
ascetic face, earnest professional manners, and that 
slight stoop which reveals the scholar, his is the 
first figure that strikes any visitor to the Pre- 
sidential mansion, just as it used to arrest one's 
attention in former days at M. Thiers's house in the 
Place St. George. M. Thiers used then to say : — • 
" St. Hilaire is my regulator ; I never knew a 
thought of mine but Avas the better for being 
passed through his head " — and though this may 
have been but a friendly compliment, there is 
certainly this much of truth in it, that M. St. 
Hilaire' s skull probably offers all the phrenological 
prominences which in M. Thiers's are most defi- 
cient. M. Thiers sees straight before him to the 
object at which he aims ; M. St. Hilaire considers 
the obstacles in the way. M, Thiers asserts ; 
M. St. Hilaire argues. M. Thiers is patriotic zeal 



M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE. 



incarnate, and must have a private idea tliat 
there is no country in the world really worth 
attention but France ; M. St. Hilaire is of opinion 
that there was a great deal of good in the Greeks, 
and that one might do worse at times than take a 
lesson from them. In all essentials the two friends 
— for they are intimate companions rather than 
chief and subaltern — think and hope alike ; but 
there is this difference between their modes of 
expressing themselves : that whereas M. Thiers' s 
utterances snap with witful shrewdness, but re- 
quire to be underlined by the speaker's smiles and 
gestures to produce their full effect, the conversa- 
tion of M. St. Hilaire might be stenographed 
straight off, and be printed as it stood, without 
there being any need to correct the proofs. There 
is no French like it but M. Guizot's and Bishop 
Dupanloup's, so that memorialists who see their 
requests declined may know that they are being 
nonplussed according to the strictest rules of 
syntax, which is, at least, satisfactory, for one 
should always be thankful for small mercies. 

It is one of the enigmas of life how certain men, 
whom one would think specially fashioned by 



62 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

nature for a stated sphere of duties, manage to 
adapt themselves to others of a quite opposite 
kind without the smallest apparent effort. There 
cannot be an hour of the day in which M. St. 
Hilaire does not think of his translations from 
Aristotle, and muse upon the notes that may be 
added to the next editions of the same. His idea 
of recreation must be to write a good article for 
the Dehats on the worship of Vishnu ; his defini- 
tion of a well-spent afternoon would be standing 
in his rostrum at the College de France, with a 
hundred and fifty pupils around him, and dis- 
coursing exhaustively to them about the " Ee- 
public " of Plato. And yet who could better than 
himself fulfil the political and social tasks which 
personal respect for the President of the Republic, 
and not by any means private inclination, have 
thrown upon his hands, and induced him to 
discharge without prospect of reward ? Watch 
him as he moves hospitably about M. Thiers's 
drawing-rooms, extending a courteous greeting and 
saying just the suitable thing to everybody. It 
has not yet become the custom for any party at 
Versailles to sulk with the President, so that on 



M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE. 63 

reception niglits there is a throng such as no French 
Court, Royal or Imperial, has attracted during the 
present century. Dukes of the vieiile roche, Bona- 
partist officers, Orleanist merchants and bankers, 
journalists, barristers, and Radicals of the finest 
scarlet — men of all ranks and opinions, in short, 
whom nothing but a Republic could have brought 
together (and yet they call it the Reign of Discord !), 
assemble there ; and M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire 
glides about in their midst almost as much of a 
host as the host himself. To the Legitimists he 
speaks with respect of their Henri Y., yet adds — 
not so pungently, perhaps, as M. Thiers, but with 
conciliatory logic— that France is not the less 
France because there is no King's head on its 
postage stamps, and that possibly the French may 
still be a great people even when they have no 
more princes to set them examples of good 
brotherhood. Among the Orleanists his esteem 
for Louis Philippe's sons is too well known to 
need repeating ; but he is not the man to shrink 
from telling even the Due d'Aumale that for a 
family to insist upon governing a country because 
some of their ancestors did so, has about the same 



64 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

sense in it as if different families were to claim 
the right to drive engines, conduct omnibuses, or 
doctor the sick by hereditary privilege. As for 
the Republicans, he warns them that the game is 
now in their own hands, and that by being cool 
and cautious they cannot fail to win. 

Where M. St. Hilaire is seen to most advantage, 
however, is when quietly nursing one of that 
weak-kneed congregation who sit in the middle of 
the House, and call themselves " Centrists." A 
French Centrist is — exceptis excipiendis — a man 
who has never been able to make up his mind, 
nor is likely to. At the Opera he feels like a 
Monarchist, because the coronation scene in the 
Propliete stirs up the loyal instincts of his imagi- 
nation. When he passes by the Invalides and 
perceives a battered veteran with two crutches and 
three medals, he reflects : — " The Napoleons were 
certainly a great race." An evening's perusal of 
the Revue des Deux Mondes, however, sends him 
back to Constitutional Orleanism : and when M. 
Thiers speaks he gets a notion that he is a Re- 
publican. Then his hobby is to " ponderate " and 
" reconcile." He would like to see things managed 



M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE. 65 

by mutual alliances, agreements, and concessions. 
If this prince's son, for instance, were to marry 
this other prince's daughter, and if both families 
could be induced kindly to admit the Republic on 
condition of their being appointed to the chief 
offices under it, how blessed a consummation that 
would be ! But again, his Republicanism is of a 
weathercock order, liable to abrupt changes. Let 
an oilman's shop in Paris catch fire, and he will 
discern the hands of the Communists in this piece 
of work, and clamour that MacMahon is the only 
man fit to govern the Republic ; on the other 
hand, let the Government give proof of vigour in 
dealing with its enemies, and he is the first to 
grumble that repressive measures were never to 
his liking. Salmon fishing is child's sport com- 
pared to the angling after this kind of gentleman. 
M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, who knows him well 
(there are about one hundred and fifty types of 
him in the House), has to follow him circum- 
spectly, manage never to frighten him, blow little 
ripples of flattery into his ears, and hook him by 
his tender point, which is the horror of assuming 
any responsibility, least of all such a one as occa- 
p 



66 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

sioning a Ministerial crisis or a revolution. The 
history of states is not all ccmjprised in the public 
records which every one can read ; there is always 
a secret history, and in such histories men like M. 
Barthdlemy St. Hilaire are the heroes. Active, 
conscientious, devoted, he walks in front of his 
chief much as those Persian ferashes who run 
ahead of their masters to remove stumbling- 
blocks, wave flies away, and beat the vulgar back. 
But the comparison is not, after all, quite a just 
one, for the ferash cannot perform his work 
without noise ; and M. St. Hilaire makes no noise. 
He is not a political shouter, a striker, or in any 
sense a militant. It is not even very certain that 
he understands the meaning of parliamentary 
tactics. All he knows is the part of persuading 
men, in polished language, to be reasonable ; and 
the fact that by no other magic than this he 
should have succeeded hitherto in keeping M. 
Thiers' s party compact, is a proof, if one were 
needed, that the French are only unmanageable 
when coerced by unreasonable means. 

M. Jules Barthelemy St. Hilaire is not by any 
means a representative of those official middlemen 



M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE. 67 

who weigli just now upon Governments. He is 
one of the most learned and respectable men in 
France. He is a financier of great experience, and 
a writer with thought and reason on his pen. 
Politics have been a study, not a trade, to him : 
and he has never derived much emolument from 
them. He is a Parisian by birth, and came to 
light on the 19th of August, 1805. Though he 
began his career as a Government clerk in the 
French Treasury, he showed a rare spirit of inde- 
pendence ; and from 1826 to 1830 wrote very 
freely in the newspapers. He was on the regular 
staff of the Globe, and went so far as to sign the 
protest of the journalists on the 28th of July, 1830. 
After the Kevolution he abandoned politics for 
literature, wath an untroubled mind. In 1834 he 
was appointed Examiner at the Polytechnic school. 
When elected a deputy in 1848, he associated him- 
self with the moderate party, who sought to calm 
the phrenzy of that excited time. He approved the 
measures taken against the Socialists, but refused 
his confidence to General Cavaignac ; and made him- 
self mouthpiece of that weak Dictator's opponents. 
Finally, at a period of life when ordinary men are 



68 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

little disposed to set out as volunteers to seek a 
fortune, he resigned his chair at the college of 
France rather than swear fidelity to the Empire, 
and recording his solemn protest against a form of 
government which dissatisfied his judgment, went 
tranquilly back to his books, and dived deeply 
into the history of the Indian philosophies. But 
he did not sulk in his retirement, and though he 
declined to mingle in politics he was ready to take 
part in scientific works of public utility. After 
the fall of the Empire, M. Barth^lemy St. Hilaire 
was elected a member of the National Assembly for 
the Department of Seine et Oise by 47,224 votes ; 
and joined with Gr^vy, Dufaure, Leon de Malle- 
ville, and Yitet, in proposing that M. Thiers should 
be appointed Chief of the Executive power. He 
formed one of the committee of fifteen who were 
named to assist the Government in conducting the 
negotiations for peace with Prussia. He took his 
seat in the Left Centre, voted for the preliminaries 
of peace, the abrogation of the laws of exile, the 
treaty of commerce, and the return of the Parlia- 
ment to Paris ; but on more than one occasion he 
has publicly expressed opinions opposed to those 



M. BARTHELEMY ST. NIL AIRE. 69 

of the Government, and his language was once, 
(Feb., 1872) formally disavowed by the President. 
Such is M. Barthdlemy St. Hilaire, no timeserver, 
no led captain, but an independent, honest, and 
accomplished gentleman. There are, perhaps, few 
things in the life of M. Thiers which do more credit 
to his wisdom and character than that of having 
secured so firm and so honourable a friend ; there 
are, perhaps, still fewer things which on the windy 
eminence where he now stands are more comfort- 
ing to him. 



M. EOTJHEE. . 

rpHE Provincial who has come up to Yersailles, 
and, at some sacrifice of time and personal 
dignity, obtained a seat in tlie Strangers' Gallery, 
asks his nearest neighbour to show him M. Thiers 
and M. Gambetta ; and when he has sated his 
eyes on these two, he says, " And where is 
Monsieur Rouher ? " M. Rouher is pointed out 
on one of the benches of the Right Centre, the 
prominent figure among a thin squad of Bona- 
partists, who sing out Tres Men ! with fine Cor- 
sican accents whenever their ex- Vice-Emperor rises 
to deliver himself, which, however, as times go, is 
not often. The Provincial, who has a tender heart 
much proner to sympathise with fallen might than 
his brothers the Parisians, would like to say that 
misfortune has thinned M. Rouher ; but, after 
considering him attentively for a moment, he is 
obliged to confess that such is not the case, and 



M. ROUHER. 



that, except for his no longer having a bright 
scarlet portfolio on the desk before him, nor wear- 
ing a white cravat, nor being surrounded by a 
buzzing and supple-backed throng of worshippers, 
he is just the same Rouher as the Provincial saw 
five years ago, shouting, Javiais ! Jamais ! 
Jamais ! It was shouted in a firm, brave voice, 
this triple Jamais ! and the two hundred and 
sixty official claqueurs, who were supposed to 
represent the clerico-Csesarist proclivities of the 
French nation, banged their hands together as if 
they had never heard anything like it ; and the 
Provincial, on returning to his home, was grateful 
to think that the Pope still had a few temporal 
acres to enhance his sanctity withal, and that, 
thanks to M, Rouher and the two hundred and 
sixty champions of order and religion afore- 
mentioned, the acres would be his to all eternity 
at the least. 

Nobody has ever been able to discover how 
much M. Rouher really cared for the Pope, or 
whether, in truth, he cared for him at all ; but it 
was the distinctive trait of this eloquent Minister's 
genius to make it always seem as if he cared im- 



72 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

mensely about every theory lie advocated. Some- 
times lie harangued his claqueurs on the same 
theory, though from opposite stand-points, within 
a very brief interval. But this did not matter. 
When a man wants to remain in office uninter- 
ruptedly through all the variations of the political 
barometer, he must study the habits of that 
accommodating reptile the chameleon ; and then 
he will not find it difficult to speak up for Italian 
unity one year, against German unity the next ; 
to propound that every nation should be free to 
choose its ruler, and yet set up a French garrison 
over the Komans and an Austrian archduke over 
the Mexicans ; to spend one-half his term of office 
in snubbing the clerical party, and the other half 
in burning incense to it. But perhaps M. Eouher 
never so well displayed the elastic texture of his 
mind as when, one fine afternoon, and without 
premonitory warning, he made an enthusiastic 
speech in favour of the liberty of the press — that 
meddlesome institution which, as he had repeat- 
edly vowed during eighteen years, should never 
want gag or fetters so long as he was there to 
adjust them. The town had been talking about 



M. ROUHER. 



the probability of the potent Vice-Emperor's resig- 
nation. A year previously, Csesar had published 
his letter about " crowning the edifice," and it was 
contended that since, after twelve months' delay, 
his Majesty really meant to keep part of his 
imperial word by getting his new Press Bill passed, 
M. Rouher must inevitably resign sooner than 
abet such a departure from the Napoleonic tradi- 
tions he cherished. But one need never despair 
of a man who is at once impressionable and elo- 
quent. Everybody who knows the suh rosd 
history of the Second Empire has heard how 
M. Rouher drove down to the Tuileries on that 
February morning in 1868, and told his master 
that this new recantation was really more than he 
had the courage to undertake. It was not as if 
he had attacked the press years before only ; but 
his last denunciation of it was scarcely three 
months old. Then the Emperor answered, " If I 
asked you to go and face fire for me, you would 
go. This is a lesser service ; I rely on your affec- 
tion to perform it ; " and in French fashion he 
embraced him. Overcome and bewildered, the 
Minister started for the House, and there made 



74 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

that famous speech in which he pleaded for the 
four million electors who had been children when 
their fathers voted the first Imperial plebiscite, and 
who could only be expected to vote plebiscites in 
their turn if liberty were given them. Gambetta, 
who — not yet a celebrity — was in one of the 
public tribunes on this occasion, is reported to 
have exclaimed, "He is the prince of orators : 
there is not a man in our party who can hold a 
candle to him ! " 

Of course, this, being uttered under the excite- 
ment of the moment, need not be taken for M. 
Gambetta' s dispassionate verdict on M. Rouher. 
The Yice-Emperor was, indeed, neither a great 
orator nor a great Minister ; he was second-rate 
in both respects. Bluff, seemingly candid, fond 
of rather heavy jokes, and gifted with that hearty 
self-confidence which makes a man talk unhalt- 
ingly, he was further assisted by the encourage- 
ments of the gentlemen who had been elected to 
the Legislature by his instrumentality, and who 
roared " Bravo ! " with most touching cordiality 
whenever he opened his mouth. But if one saw 
Eouher assailed by the squib-like wit of Picard, 



M. ROUHER. 75 



upset by some telling philippic of Jules Favre, or 
driven into a corner by one of tliose sbrewd, sharp, 
and long speeches of Thiers, then was the time to 
judge of his oratory. The performance was gene- 
rally like the floundering of an over-armed and 
over-furious knight out of a morass. The Minis- 
ter would plunge at his adversaries ; a great deal 
of his rhetoric was spent in arm gyrations through 
the air ; and, whatever might be the topic under 
discussion, a railway bill, a bill for levying more 
taxes, or for suppressing more liberties, the wind 
up of the speech was invariably the same — that is, 
a flourish of the " spectre rouge," an appeal to the 
memories of '93, of M. Marat, and of the waste- 
paper currency. Of course this form of oratory 
has its uses ; for when you can accuse an adver- 
sary of wishing to revive the guillotine, you are 
spared the trouble of confuting his logic ; but it is 
not oratory which future generations of Frenchmen 
can be expected to rake up from old newspaper 
files and copy respectfully into elocution books. 

As to M. Rouher's statesmanship, it seems un- 
generous to say of a Minister who clung to office 
eighteen years that he lacked capacity, and left 



76 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

scarcely one good piece of work behind him ; but 
on this point just one word. You take a nation 
and strip it of all its liberties ; you fetter it, gag 
it, and throw it at your feet. Then you say to it, 
" I am going to govern you." There is no press 
worth mentioning ; the constituencies have been 
so manipulated that they are as supple in your 
hands as gum-balls ; the judges and magistrates 
have surrendered you their independence ; and 
you have a large army to put your enemies to 
reason. Then you set to work, and in eighteen 
years you double your country's debt. You 
alienate one by one all the friends she had. You 
scatter broadcast the love of extravagance and the 
taste for all that is corrupt in morals, false and 
flashy in ethics. Reckless and inconsistent in 
your dealings with other nations, you drag your 
country into one war after another, and syste- 
matically foster in the people the love for this 
bootless fighting which you call glory ; yet such 
is your infatuation that you refuse to see how you 
must inevitably meet some day with an enemy 
strong enough to withstand you, and you keep 
both arms and knowledge from your people, so 



M. ROUHER. 77 



tliat on tlie day when invasion comes it sweeps 
over them like a deluge. Then, when this has 
happened, when the country is devastated, and 
other men are struggling with jaded heads and 
aching hearts to repair the mischief which you 
have done, you come back with an injured look 
and say, "Here am I, the man whom you are un- 
gratefully abusing. It was my policy, and my 
friends', that brought about the disasters from 
which you all suffer ; but Napoleon III, is none 
the less at this moment the lawful owner of this 
Commonwealth, and the master to whom all the 
forty millions of you, its citizens, owe respect and 
obedience. As for me, when matters are restored 
to their old footing I shall probably be Prime 
Minister again ; meanwhile, as there is no man 
more competent than I to advise you how a 
country should be managed, the best thing you 
can do is to listen deferentially to my counsels." 

This is the pith of what M. Rouher has to say 
whenever he now opens his mouth in public. He 
is the spokesman of the Emperor party, as distin- 
guished from the Empress and Regency faction, 
which the wise M. Clement Duvernois leads ; and 



78 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

he believes in a Bonapartist restoration as lie does 
in his own infallibility, and possibly in the Pope. 
Let us do him the justice to add, however, that 
being in private life a charming man, of plea- 
sant and chatty mood, he does not scruple to 
admit that the Emperor and he — but principally 
the Emperor — did commit a few blunders to- 
gether, and he will profit by the remembrance of 
these when the time comes. Of course, the chief 
blunder was that Press Law. If there had been 
» no Liberal papers, the Oj)position would never have 
waxed strong ; consequently the Emperor would 
not have been driven, for dynastic reasons, to slap 
Germany on the face ; Sedan would never have 
been fought ; and the Tuileries would not now be 
roofless. Therefore, obviously and indisputably, 
according to M. Rouher's comj)lacent logic, the 
authors of all France's misfortunes are the Libe- 
rals. It behoves every Frenchman of sense to 
remember this. 

Voltaire tells a quaint story of a princess of 
Babylon who was taken prisoner by a king of 
Tartary. The king was a rough churl, and he in- 
formed the princess, without more ado, that he 



M. ROUHER. 79 



intended classing lier fortliwitli in the numerous 
category of liis wives. " Whereat," said the young 
lady, in relating the adventure, " I stamped my 
foot and looked proudly at him, for I had been told 
that we princesses had a dignity and a majesty in 
our glance Mdiich it was impossible to resist. But 
the king only laughed. He said I was a saucy 
girl, but that I should soon think better of -it ; 
and so, patted me on the shoulder, and left me." 
If this anecdote is introduced into a sketch of 
M. Kouher, it is merely to say that great, 
men do not always bear their high rank stamped 
on their brows ; and that, shorn of their power, 
they may sometimes have to do a good deal of 
foot-stamping before convincing people of their 
eminence. Thus, if M. Rouher, one of the most 
powerful men in France, were, for instance, to fall 
into the hands of Signer Fuvio, the brigand chief 
whom his Holiness the Pope seems to have so 
much difficulty in suppressing, it is to be feared 
that it Avould scarcely occur to that personage to 
call him " Eccelenza." In one way this might be 
lucky for the ex-Minister, for he would probably 
have to pay but half ransom ; Fuvio would cer- 



8o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

tainly set him down as a retired grazier or a 
country lawyer, and let him off cheap, disdainfully. 
One day when M. Rouher reigned supreme, 
Madame Rouher, who was giving a dinner party 
the same night, wanted to have a certain head- 
dress of hers ready for the evening. Her hairdresser 
lived in the Rue de la Paix, and M. Rouher, who 
happened to be going to the Ministry of Justice 
in the Place Vendome, said he would execute the 
commission, which was simply to leave a parcel 
containing the aforesaid head-dress, and request 
that there might be no delay in returning it. 
Unfortunately, the ordinary attire of a French 
functionary — Cabinet Minister or other — -is exactly 
that of a butler, black tail-coat and a white cravat ; 
so that M. Rouher, who, in jumping out of his 
brougham, had not taken the precaution to throw 
on an overcoat, looked for all the world like a 
servant as he climbed the staircase leading 
to the first-floor, where the hairdresser resided, and 
was sharply apostrophised by the concierge, who 
asked him why he had not gone up the back- 
stairs? The thing was considered an excellent 
joke when the Minister related it to his guests a 



M. ROUHER. 



few hours later ; but the outside public enjoyed it 
still more than the guests, for when the story was 
spread about by the press, it occurred to everybody 
who knew the Minister's plain features and plod- 
ding gait, that the concierge could not have made 
a better mistake if he had been a wag and done it 
for the purpose. 

Eugene Rouher, who is now verging on his 
fifty-eighth year, is a native of Auvergne, which is 
supposed to be to France what Bceotia was to 
Greece, and Essex, of yore, to England — the pro- 
vince whose intelligence is scarcest. He was born 
on the 30th of November, 1814, and is the son of 
an attorney. The Auvergnats are mostly brawny 
fellows, tall, broad-shouldered, thick-tongued, and 
loutish. It is from them that are collected all 
the water-carriers and coal-heavers of Paris, and 
the exclamation, " Boh ! cest un Auvergnat," is 
generally held an ample excuse for anything like 
being drunk or disorderly, or assaulting the 
police. As every medal has its reverse, however, 
the Auvergnats are acknowledged to be patient 
and laborious, so that many of them who have 
begun by being water-carriers end by being mil- 
G 



82 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

lionaires ; and more than one wlio lias started in 
life, like Eugene Koulier, witli nothing but his 
own dogged energy to help him, has found that 
energy no bad capital in the end, and drawn first- 
rate interest therefrom. It is an encouraging 
thing for young Frenchmen to note how almost all 
the men who rise to power in their country rise 
from nothing. In England we are accustomed to 
look upon France with a kind of pity as a land 
much more backward than ours in respect of en- 
lightenment, and yet — if it were meet to establish 
comparison — where should we find in England a 
road so broad and sure as that which in France 
lies open to merit ? Eugene Rouher, like MM. 
Thiers and Guizot, sprung of humble stock — so 
humble indeed, and so poor, that, as he confessed 
a few years ago in a public speech, his clothes 
were wofuUy patched when he went to school, and 
put him in grievous dread of being laughed at. 
This was in the pleasant old town of Riom, where 
women are famed for their milk-white teeth ; but 
where schoolboys are probably no better than else- 
where. However, young Rouher got over his 
schoolboy days. He had a fine strong fiat, which 



M. ROUHER. Zi 



had most likely a good deal to do witli it. If a 
playfellow cliaffed him about the queer cut of his 
pantaloons, he knocked that schoolboy down — 
a sound form of argument, and conclusive, which 
earned him the only sort of academical fame he 
ever acquired. It has been said that he is too 
ignorant even to be inconvenienced by historical 
precedents ;- and in this respect he differs from 
most other eminent French statesmen of the present 
century — the Duke de Richelieu, Villele, Casimir 
Pdrier, Thiers, Dupon, and Guizot, who were all 
scholars. Young Rouher was no scholar. He 
studied books, but had small love for them ; and 
when, after passing through the University of 
Clermont,* he entered the Bar of that town, he 
was quite unknown, and it never occurred to any- 
body to prophesy that he would some day be a 
great man. 

Imagine a thick-set lad with a fat face, 
firmly planted on a pair of dumpy legs, in the 
middle of a court of justice, and btsllowing a speech 
with a blurting voice, to convince three sceptic 

* Another account says that M. Eouher studied law in Paris, 
and was called to the Bar at Eiom. 



84 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

judges as to the innocence of a client. Every four 
or five minutes the stout lad pauses to mop the 
sweat off his brow with anything that comes to 
hand first — ^his pocket-handkerchief, a corner of 
his black stuff gown, or the long white fall round 
his neck. This done, he sets off again in the same 
energetic way as before ; tossing his arms about, 
plunging his head backwards and forwards, roar- 
ing, uttering threatening ejaculations, and panting 
noisily like a buffalo. The judges look on im- 
passibly, for they are used to it. It is the young 
barrister, Eugene Eouher, pleading, as he always 
does plead, by throwing all his heart into it, and 
making as much fuss to save his client from a five 
franc fine as he would to snatch him from the 
guillotine. Orators who thus roar are not the best, 
but they always get on well. There is a class of 
litigants who cannot feel happy unless their counsel 
makes a substantial row. An advocate who would 
argue their cause with masterly logic, but in a quiet 
voice, would not suit them ; they woifld never feel 
as if they had had their money's worth unless there 
had been the proper amount of screaming, pound- 
ing, and perspiration. 



M. ROUHER. .85 



Doubtless there were many orators more learned 
and clever than Eugene Rouher at the Bar of 
Clermont, but there were none to come near him 
in vigour or in obstinacy. It was a marvel to thin, 
unimpassioned men, how he would work himself 
up to such pitches of excitement ; and how he 
could stand the unceasing drains which he put 
upon his system. But the way in which he would 
deal with a plate of beef when he came out of 
court did something to solve the question. He 
was a man of simple tastes and scrupulously 
sober ; but two pounds of steak, a whole fowl, and 
a bowl of salad were no more than he could dispose 
of at breakfast ; and it was noticed that he always 
spoke better after he had put a good quart of red 
Burgundy under his waistcoat. He never tried to 
write a book ; he had other fish to fry. He had 
not been five years at the Bar before there was 
more work for him than he could find time to do. 
Up at six and never in bed till midnight, his life was 
one of hard labour such as would astonish some of 
those gentlemen who pretend to the exclusive title 
of " working men." By the time he reached his 
thirty-fifth year he was pocketing 30,000 francs 



86 . MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

per annum (a fine income at that time), and his 
fellow-citizens were talking of him as a likely 
candidate for the Chamber of Deputies. Needless 
to say that he set up as a Liberal. Liberalism is 
the most convenient of faiths, because it saves a 
candidate all the trouble of reasoning. When a 
man constitutes himself the advocate of existing 
institutions, he may be called upon for the why 
and the wherefore ; when he proposes to demo- 
lish institutions, his good motives are taken for 
granted. Nevertheless, Eugene Rouher was not a 
spitfire Liberal. He had too much rough good 
sense to fall into the cant of Radicalism. He 
affected no more Liberalism than was just enough 
for electioneering purposes ; and when once in the 
House, he sided with that moderate group who on 
most questions took the sensible view, and voted ac- 
cording to their lights, one day with the " Right " 
and another with the " Left." At first he made no 
great impression as a speaker. He was eclipsed in 
a chamber which, besides the two leaders of Right 
and Left, counted such orators as Lamartine, 
Arago, Berryer, Cremieux, Ledru-Rollin, Louis 
Blanc, Odillon-Barrot, Victor Cousin, and Yillemain. 



M. ROUHER. 87 



His place seemed to be rather amongst the mem- 
bers who were good workers in committee, and could 
make a tolerable speech on a question of second-rate 
importance. It should be remarked that French 
parliamentary oratory was then at a much higher 
standard than it is at present. There has never 
been such a combination of talent as was seen in 
the last Assembly elected under Louis Philippe, 
and in the first elected under the Second Republic, 
The Revolution of February, 1848, was an un- 
pleasant blow for Eugene Rouher, who feared for 
a moment that his career was at an end. France 
had made such a terrific stride during the 24th of 
February, that men of practical, semi-conservative 
views like him, were left far in the lurch. The 
deputy of the Fviy de Dome accepted the Republic 
just as one accepts a hail-storm or an attack of 
fever, resignedly. He even had the courage — a 
rare courage at such a time — to make no secret of 
his regret for what had happened, and it was no 
doubt to this honest frankness that he owed the 
honour of being sent to the Constituent Assembly 
by his old electors, the majority of whom thought 
in their hearts as poorly of the Republic as he did, 



88 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

In tlie new Cliamber M. Eoulier, of course, took 
his place amongst the " friends of order." From 
the first he persistently opposed the noisy clique 
headed by Louis Blanc, Raspail, Bianqui, Barbds, 
and a few other excited enthusiasts. His vote was 
always given in favour of energetic resistance to 
mob rule ; and at a time when there was so much 
foolery of all kinds in speech and action, his utter- 
ances had a healthy tone, which attracted atten- 
tion, and soon placed him in the category of rising 
men. It is a curious thing to remember, that 
whilst M. Eouher was steadily making his way by 
force of common sense, two of his future colleagues, 
MM. Billault and Baroche, who afterwards became 
noted for ultra-imperialism of the most extreme 
kind, were then distinguishing themselves by the 
violence of their Radical sentiments. M. Baroche 
was being elected in the Charente, as a more 
advanced Liberal than his competitor, M. Eugene 
Pelletan. M. Billault had drawn up for his 
own constituents an address so wildly subversive, 
that the Advocate-General, Sandon, to whom he 
submitted it, pronounced it too hot even for 1848, 
3,nd he was obliged to tone it down. 



M, ROUHER, 89 



After tlie election of Prince Bonaparte to the 
Presidency, the attitude assumed by M. Rouher 
became more anti-republican than ever. In com- 
mon with all sensible people, he had been tho- 
roughly disgusted by the weakness of the Provi- 
sional Government. The events of the 23rd, 24 th, 
and 2oth June had stripped him of the last of his 
illusions, and it was evident to all who took any 
interest in him that he would give his entire sup- 
port to the first prince who was strong enough to 
re-establish a monarchy. Many people may have 
forgotten that the prevailing impression in Paris 
during 1849 and 1850 was that the Presidency 
would be merely an interregnum preceding the 
restoration of the Count de Chambord, or the 
accession of the Prince de Joinville. Nobody 
looked upon Prince Bonaparte's tenure of power as 
serious, or likely to become definite. This is what 
allowed the Prince to steal so long a march on his 
opponents. Whilst Legitimists and Orleanists con- 
spired in secret, thinking too lightly of the Presi- 
dent to treat him as a dangerous adversary, the 
latter was quietly making his plans and selecting 
his men. One of these men was M. Rouher. Louis 



yo MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Napoleon, wlio is a good judge of mankind, rated 
him instantly at his true worth. He saw in him a 
resolute, hard-working member, whose influence 
was daily becoming greater in the Chamber ; and 
he put him into the Cabinet as Minister of Justice, 
a difficult post to fill, but one which, after all, re- 
quired rather stubborn good sense than tran- 
scendent abilities. 

Up to this time M. RoTiher had had no marked 
preference for any particular dynasty. It is true, 
he had on one occasion exclaimed in the midst of 
an excited speech, " The Revolution 0/ 1848 was a 
catastrophe ! and your Republic is a disgrace !" 
but these ejaculations, which well-nigh got him 
expelled the Chamber, were taken rather as monar- 
chical than dynastic regrets. M. Rouher would 
probably have sworn allegiance to the Count de 
Chambord, the Duke d'Aumale, or the Prince de 
Joinville, with the same readiness as to Prince 
Bonaparte, if one of the former had been in office ; 
but having once cast in his lot with the President, 
he was quite shrewd enough to see that it was 
his best interest to remain faithful. Besides, 
as already said, he was essentially a friend of 



M. ROUHER. 



order, and cared little who reigned so long as the 
ruling hand was strong enough. Nevertheless, 
Louis Napoleon did not give him his full confi- 
dence when he placed him amongst his counsellors.; 
so that although M. Eouher may have foreseen, yet 
he was in no way privy to, the cowp d'etat. The 
President knew quite well that M. Rouher was one 
of those men who bow to a coup d'etat when it has 
succeeded, hut who are not venturesome enough to 
risk their heads for it before it is accomplished. 

However, that M. Rouher's business capacities 
for office had fully justified the Prince's exjDecta- 
tions was fully proved by the fact that his name 
figured on the list of the new Cabinet issued on the 
3rd December, 1851 ; and from that time until 
July, 1869, he remained in office with but one 
interruption of a few months — January to Septem- 
ber, 1852 — when he resigned on account of the 
confiscation and sale of the lands belonging to the 
Orleans family. This resignation of M. Rouher 
is a feather in his cap ; it was the act of an honest 
man and a gentleman. The sale of the Orleans 
property was a deed of political iniquity quite con- 
trary to the spirit of the age, and even M. Rouher's 



92 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

"worst enemies have admired his conduct in oppos- 
ing it. Somebody has said that " happy nations 
have no history," by which is meant that when 
events flow by in peaceful, unbroken monotony 
there is nothing for the historian to dwell on. 
The same thing -may be said of the lives of men, 
and may be applied to a certain degree, in this 
particular instance, to M. Rouher. The political 
life of this statesman has been singularly happy. 
Raised to poAver by dint of hard work rather than 
by force of talent, he had the rare good fortune 
to keep his place twenty years by the same simple 
means as he got it. He has been a hard worker 
and a hard talker, but little else. Appointed suc- 
cessively to the posts of Minister of Commerce, 
Minister of the Interior, Minister of Finance, and 
Minister of State, he has left behind him in all 
these offices the reputation of a man who gets 
through any amount of business, and gets through 
it fairly. But if we except the negotiation of the 
Treaty of Commerce, the honour of which he 
shares with the Emperor and M. Michel Chevalier, 
he has left behind him no monument such as that 
which a true statesman looks to for future fame. 



J\L ROUHER. 93 



There are no great acts witli wliicli his name can 
be associated. He has had in his hand boundless 
opportunities of doing good, and has generally 
neglected them — not perhaps from aversion to 
doing good, but because the idea of progress has 
never been one which he has cared to grasp. 
Quite satisfied with his own position when in 
power, he has always thought that everybody else 
ought to be satisfied with theirs, and cries for 
reform became gradually synonymous in his ears 
with factiousness. He was so blind to the real con- 
dition of France, that on the day foFo ving the de- 
claration of war against Prussia (16th July, 1870), 
he solemnly assured the Senate that " France was 
ready to fight," and that " the day of victory was 
near." A few weeks afterwards he was obliged to 
fly to England, and narrowly escaped falling victim 
to a mob at Calais. On his arrival in London he 
founded La Situation, a Bonapartist newspaper, 
which must have cost somebody a great deal of 
money. At the general election of the 8 th July, 
1871, he presented himself as a candidate for the 
Gironde and the Charente Inferieure, but was de- 
feated in both places. After that he resided for a 



94 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

time in Paris, and contributed several articles to 
La France, a journal favourable to the fallen empire. 
M. Severin Abbatucci, one of the most devoted of 
tbe Emperor's adherents, having resigned his seat to 
make a vacancy for M. Eouher, he was elected as 
member for Ajaccio on the 11th of February, 
1872, and almost immediately afterwards fought 
a wordy duel with the Duke d'Audiffret - Pas- 
quier. As a parliamentary orator, he is no better 
than he was as a forensic pleader, his main strength 
consisting in energy and roaring. The speeches he 
delivered as Minister of State, in defence of im- 
perial policy, are inflated but empty. He insulted 
the Opposition, but he never dared to meet it in 
fair argument, and now he is himself in Opposition 
he is seldom plausible or logical. Had he lived in 
a country possessed of parliamentary institutions and 
a responsible Cabinet, he would never have risen 
high nor remained in office long. His hard-working 
qualities would have stood him in good stead as a 
chief clerk, for instance, or an efficient under- 
secretary, but his shallowness of reasoning, his 
narrowness of mind, and his extraordinary obstinacy 
would have exposed him to repeated defeats, and 



M. ROUHER. 95 



have shattered the most robust faith which the 
most robust of parties could have put in him. 

If he kept in power so long in France, history 
will probably record that it was mainly because he 
had no rivals. From 1851 to 1869 political life 
was extinct. M. Rouher ruled as the governor of 
a prison may be said to rule over a community 
handcuffed, gagged, and closely guarded. Now, 
however, that the breeze of liberty has begun to 
blow once more over the land, the best thing he 
can do is to retire into private life. His days as a 
Minister are past. If he returned to power he 
could add nothing to his fame as an exceptionally 
lucky man, whereas events might possibly impair 
the reputation he enjoys of always getting-i^eii out 
of scrapes. 



THE DUG DE BEOGLIE. 

nPHE Due de Broglie, wlio does not quite lead, 
but aspires to lead, the Orleanist party, is a 
very finished type of the class of noblemen who 
would be ruling France at this hour if the Eevo- 
tion of 1830 had never taken place. Supposing 
Charles X. had become suddenly prudent and 
retained the Martignac Ministry, there is a proba- 
bility that the Bourbon dynasty might have struck 
new roots ; the hereditary House of Peers, a much 
more liberal and popular body than the Chamber 
of Deputies of that period, would have continued 
to flourish ; and the present Due de Broglie, after 
sitting a few years in the Lower House for his 
department, the Eure, would in due course have 
succeeded his father and distinguished himself in 
the Upper Chamber as a French Whig. This 
might even have happened, though less certainly 
and smoothly, if the Orleans monarchy had sur- 



THE DUC DE BROGUE. 



vived. Had tlie Eepublic of 1848 lasted, the 
results would have been the same, for the Re- 
public threw a broad road open to talent in all its 
forms, and the influence of clever dukes was quite 
as much felt as under the Royalty. But the 
Empire, which put the whole political machinery 
of France out of gear, flung all such educated 
and obnoxious Constitutionalists as the Broglies, 
d'Haussonvilles, R^musats, and Montalivets vio- 
lently out of their grooves. They became as 
exiles on their own soil, a small, well-read, and 
much-hated band, whom the Empire feared and 
combated with all the weapons of its unscrupulous 
arsenal, and whom, in drawing-rooms where Bona- 
partist wits lisped their jokes, it was thought 
funny to laugh at as le parti des parapluies or le 
parti Buloz. This last name was, of course, an 
allusion to the Revue des Deux Mondes, which, 
with the Journal des Debats, formed the two 
pulpits whence the pai^ti des parapluies made 
their voices heard, not loudly, but patiently and. 
eloquently, during eighteen years, for the enlight- 
enment of a very light-needing community. 

One must never forget the good that was done 

H 



qS MEAT OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

by the Orleanists, or rather by the Constitutionalists, 
under the Second Empire. They were the chief 
educators of the present generation. Imperialism 
had little to dread from the Legitimists, who 
sulked and educated nobody — not even them- 
selves ; nor did it much fear the Republicans, who, 
being a disunited body, often visionary and gene- 
rally too plainspoken, were easy to defame and 
suppress. But it was not easy to suppress men 
who launched their criticisms under cover of his- 
torical essays or academical speeches. This Minis- 
ter might frown at reading a very knowing paper 
on Tiberius, and that other might bite his lips 
on hearing the institutions of the Empire pulled 
to pieces under the cupola of the Institute ; but 
there was no handle for a prosecution in either of 
these offences, and the Ministers had to bear the 
appreciative smiles of the literate ajnong the public 
as visitations not to be avoided. Looking back 
upon those days, one must own that despotism 
almost had its compensation in the exquisite plea- 
sure people felt in reading the attacks against it, 
A new book, a clever article full of demure irony, 
M. Eugene Forcade's fortnightly bulletins, the re- 



THE DUC DE BROGUE. 99 

ception of a new Orleanist at tlie Academy, some 
double-edged lecture by one of the Professors at 
tbe Sorbonne — all these were treats to which there 
is no parallel where press and tongue are free. 
Paris revelled in them ; and it must have often 
occurred to the inhabitants of the Tuileries that it 
would be almost worth while to have a conspiracy 
once a year, and a street riot every six months, to 
be free from that pestilent swarm of moderate 
Liberals who were always setting their stings on 
the sore places. 

No family was more quietly active than that of 
the Broglies in this work of discomfiting the Im- 
perial dynasty and propagating opposition to it 
by literary and social means. Descended from 
a family which during the last century alone 
counted three field-marshals on its roll, the pre- 
sent Duke's father was a proved Liberal, who had 
inherited his love of freedom from that Prince 
Yictor de Broglie, his sire, who, after adopting 
the principles of the Revolution, had been guillo- 
tined under the Terror, less as an aristocrat than 
as a hater of injustice. It Avas of no use for Bona- 
partists to call such a man either a Jacobin or a 



lOO MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

bigot. He was simply a cultivated, accomplished, 
and patriotic nobleman, who was as adverse from 
Royalist as from Democratic excesses, and had 
proved this throughout his whole career. It was 
he who, almost alone in the House of Peers, and 
being then the youngest member of it, had stood 
up for Ney. In 1816 he had spoken and voted 
for a full amnesty of all the Republicans and Bona- 
partists whom the Bourbonists judges had con- 
demned. In 1817 his voice had been raised 
repeatedly and vigorously in favour of the liberty 
of the press. Both as a peer under the Restora- 
tion and as a Minister under Louis Philippe, his 
ideal had been to endow France with a political 
system like that of England, and there is little 
doubt that if there had been more Frenchmen like 
him to assist in the experiment the thing would 
have become possible. But his crowning work, 
and that which he regarded with the greatest 
pride, was the education which he gave his sons. 
M. Guizot, in a recent memoir, has recorded how 
full, painstaking, and judicious this education was ; 
and it may be added in a general way, that when 
French noblemen are educated — which, thanks to 



THE DUC DE BROGLIE. 



the clergy, is less often than might be— tliey are 
taught to a pitch of perfection not common in 
other lands. Besides, the young Broglies had not 
only the advantage of their father's teaching ; 
their gifted mother, Madame de Stael's only 
daughter, imparted to them many of the qualities 
of her own generous heart and beautiful mind, so 
that the boys grew up to be, if not paragons, at 
least young Frenchmen of no ordinary promise. 
In 1848, whilst the late Due de Broglie was 
sitting in the Legislative Assembly on the benches 
of the Moderate Royalists, his eldest son started 
in journalism with as much diligence as though 
he had his bread to win by his pen, and soon his 
name was classed among the foremost of the rising 
generation which it was then thought would guide 
France for the next thirty or forty years. It is 
difficult to realise the full bitterness of the dis- 
appointment which must have fallen upon men 
who, like Prince Albert de Broglie, then saw their 
newly opening careers suddenly closed to them by 
the cowp d'etat, and perhaps the bitterness was the 
greater in this particular case, as no efforts were 
spared by the Imperial dynasty in endeavouring to 



I02 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

conciliate the Broglies. Just as the First Napo- 
leon, very anxious to see a field-marshal of the old 
nobility at the head of his parvenu staff, sent a 
special ambassador to Miinster, where the Mar^chal 
de Broglie was living since the Eevolution, to 
invite him to return to France, so Napoleon III. 
would have esteemed it no mean triumph if the 
great family, whose name had been in French- 
mien's mouths any time these two hundred years, 
had consented to accept honours and places from 
him. It happened that during most of the Second 
Empire the department of the Eure was governed 
by that gallant and expensive M. Janvier de la 
Motte, who has since become notorious : and this 
gentleman was as glib-tongued a missionary as 
any that could have been selected for the work of 
proselytising. " What did the names of dynasties 
signify after all ? Had not the Bonapartes done 
as much for French glory as the Orleans family ? 
And liberty — what did that mean ? Had not the 
friends of liberty murdered M. le Due's father in 
'93, and overturned the King he loved in '48, 
and would not they go on murdering and over- 
turning so long as their hands and tongues were 



THE DUC DE BROGLIE. 103 

free ? ' Surely, tlien, it was the mission of all 
patriotic and liberal noblemen to rally round the 
Sovereign whom the people had selected, and to 
co-operate with him in establishing institutions 
which should be really suited to the character of 
the nation," &c. Underlying this lurked more 
than one hint that if " M. le Due " pleased, a seat 
in the Senate was ready for him, and that his heir, 
the Prince Albert, could begin life either as a 
councillor of state, an official deputy, or a minister 
plenipotentiary. But the Broglies were never to 
be caught. Theirs was not a constitutionalism 
which, like that of the Dupins and the Laroche- 
jacqueleins, could compound with Csesarism under 
the specious pretext of its having been submitted 
to by the nation. They loved liberty as a religion ; 
they courteously rebuffed M. Janvier ; and with- 
out descending to factious plots, they made of 
their house the resort of all the eminent men of 
France who thought like them. As a result, the 
letters they wrote to each other were (as has since 
been irrefutably proved) carefully opened and read 
in the Postal ''Cabinet Noir;" all M. Janvier's 
screw-power was brought to bear against their 



104 ^^^ OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

nominees at election time, and they were now and 
then treated to a domiciliary visit like that one in 
1861, when the police seized all the copies of a 
work lithographed by the late Duke for private 
circulation, and entitled, Mes Vues sur le Gouverne- 
Tnent de la France. In 1870, at the time of the 
OUivier fervour, it was rumoured that Prince 
Albert de Broglie, who in that year succeeded to 
his father's title, was about to accept a high diplo- 
matic post ; and had he done so, it would certainly 
have been from no abating of Liberalism on his 
part, but from the belief that the Empire had at 
length come round to parliamentary views. As it 
turned out, however, the rumour was unfounded. 
More cautious than poor Prdvost-Paradol, his 
friend, the new Duke was afraid to trust in Par- 
liamentarism, Csesar-bom and only a few weeks old. 
The Empire is dead and buried now, the Re- 
public has succeeded it, and the Due de Broglie, 
who was elected to the National Assembly as 
deputy for the Eure in 1871, has served the 
new regime as ambassador* and legislator. It 

♦ Appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to London on the 19th 
February, 1871 ; r. signed 1st May, 1872. 



THE DUC DE BROGUE. 105 

is pretended by many, especially among the very 
Liberal, that in this twofold capacity he has not 
quite fulfilled what was expected of him ; but 
this is not so disappointing as it would appear. 
Imagine a man sculling in a very fast outrigger, 
and keeping ahead of a boatful of people seated 
in a "tub;" then imagine the people in the 
tub getting out of this slow contrivance on to 
a fast steamer which will overtake the outrigger, 
and soon leave it out of sight. The position of 
the man in the outrigger is that of the Due de 
Broglie. A couple of years ago he was consider- 
ably in advance of the French nation, huddled in 
the Napoleonic tub ; but since then the tub's crew 
have got on board the Republican steamer, and it 
is now the Orleanist outrigger's turn to lag behind. 
Keeping up the metaphor, one may say that the 
Duke's reason for not deserting his outrigger is 
chiefly a want of confidence in the pilot who is 
guiding the steamer. The Broglies were never 
Thiersists. Under Louis Philippe, the late Duke 
was Guizot's supporter ; under the present system, 
his heir is one of those who hold to monarchism 
from the conscientious belief that it can give more 



ro6 MEN OF THE TH-IRD REPUBLIC. 

freedom thfin a Republic. This inference he draws 
from England, which, in all things is his model ; 
but one may trust he will end by perceiving that 
the cro\vn which fits one nation is not necessarily 
made to cap another, and that having arrived at 
this discovery he will lend his name and his 
talents to found that form of free government 
under which alone France can hope for stability. 
Under Bourbonism, Orleanism, or Bonapartism, 
the country can only count upon one-third of its 
childi-en — that is, only put forth a third of its 
strength ; under the Republic it should be able to 
rely, and generally does rely, upon all. M. de 
Broglie can scarcely wish for a more convincing 
proof of the eclectic nature of Republicanism than 
the fact that M. Thiers' s Cabinet comprises men of 
all shades of opinion, and that if he — M. de 
Broglie — is not seated there, the fault is his, and 
not that of the President, whose parliamentary 
proclivities he is doubtless too hasty in suspecting. 
The family of Broglie, or Broglia, came to 
France in the suite of Mazarin ; they are of 
Italian origin, and the name is pronounced Broille. 
They were admitted as princes of the Holy Empire 



THE DUC DE BROGUE. 107 

in 1759. The present Duke was born on tlie 
IStli of June, 1821 ; and was married on the 
19th of June, 1845, to Mademoiselle Pauline- 
Eleonore de Galard de B^arn. He has five sons. 
His princi2:)al literary work is "L'Eglise et 1' Empire 
Romain an IV*^- Siecle " (1856, 2 vols., 8vo.), which 
has passed through five editions. It is rather a 
bald history of the reign of Constantino, written 
from the Catholic point of view ; and was followed 
by two other books, " Julien I'Apostat " and 
" Theodore le Grand," neither of which attracted 
much attention. He was elected a member of the 
French Academy as successor to Father Lacor- 
daire. 



M. DTJFAUEE. 

A CRABBED, sour-featured little veteran, wlio 
lias a knack of snubbing impertinent deputies 
so roughly tbat they avoid being impertinent 
again, M. Dufaure, Minister of Justice, President 
of the Council of State, and, when M. Thiers is 
not present. Chairman of the Cabinet, gives one 
rather the idea of a cross-grained provincial lawyer 
than of an experienced jurist and most able states- 
man. He sits at his bench gathered up in a 
bundle, his lean hand stroking his wrinkled face, 
and his eye fixed with no friendly expression on 
the members, whoever they may be, who look as 
if they were going to accost him. Supposing a 
facetious colleague were to paste in front of his 
desk a paper, inscribed " Take care ; he bites ! " one 
would be inclined to put trust in that paper, and 
make a circuit sooner than approach M. Dufaure. 
Yet if business renders an interview unavoidable, 



M. DUFAURE. 109 



one is surprised to see the sour expression fall 
from the Minister's face like a mask. He smiles 
a rather paternal smile, but answers in a clear, 
well-toned voice, which strikes one as being strong 
to a degree for so aged a body. This pleasant 
state of things lasts until the petitioner, querist, 
or whatever he may be, prefers some request 
which the Minister is unwilling to grant. Then 
back comes the sour look, the thin lips close up 
like a spring-trap, and by a prompt emphatic 
negative, M. Dufaure shows his interlocutor that 
statesmen who retain all their faculties at seventy- 
four are not to be caught with chaff. M. Dufaure 
was the acknowledged head of the French Bar 
throughout the Second Empire. If ill-luck 
dragged one into a lawsuit, one's avoue always 
said, " We must try and retain Dufaure," Only, 
it was not so easy to retain Dufaure, for Dufaure 
had been known to earn in one year as much 
as 300,000 francs, which, according to French 
notions, was phenomenal ; and briefs were piled 
up in his chambers by the hundredweight. 
Young " stagiaire " advocates admired the fer- 
vour of Berryer, the atticism of Chaix d'Est- 



no MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Ange, the rapid rhetoric of AUou, and the clever 
special-pleading of Lachaud ; but Dufaure was the 
man whom they would have liked to emulate, 
because Dufaure won all his suits, and was so 
redoubtable an adversary, that litigants had been 
known to back out of an action, and even pay the 
costs, on hearing that he was to appear against 
them. He Imew the Code by heart, and his brain 
was a voluminous dictionary of legal precedents. 
No public prosecutor could ever catch him at 
fault ; no judge ever overruled him on a point 
of law. There is a good story of his having been 
retained at the eleventh hour to defend a pro- 
vincial editor prosecuted by Government. He 
arrived in the small town where the tribunal sat, 
pulled the loosely dra\\m indictment of the local 
procurator to pieces, and made out for the de- 
fendant a case so plain that the three Imperialist 
judges, in deep disgust at such a necessity, were 
obliged to nonsuit the Government. Meeting the 
Prefect the next day, the Chief Judge was frowned 
at by that functionary, who bitterly reproached 
him with the collapse of the suit. " Yes, indeed," 
answered the Judge naively, "but we were not 



M. DUFAURE. 



■warned that Dufaure was coming, else we should 
have prepared our judgment beforehand. As it 
was, you see, we were taken unawares." 

But though Dufaure was such a master pleader, 
law was much less his vocation than politics. 
He had been thrown back to the Bar by the 
coup d'etat, but he chafed under this mishap, 
and wistfully thought of the days when he 
led a powerful party in the Legislature and 
was regarded as future Prime Minister. Dufaure 
had begun his career at a time when the Re- 
storation seemed resolved to undo all the work 
of the Revolution, and when Liberalism was a 
much more perilous creed than it has become 
since. Practising at Bordeaux, he knew that the 
attentive eye of the police was fixed upon him, 
and he was one day advised that a carbonaro con- 
spiracy having been discovered, means might be 
found of implicating him in it if he did not keep 
a watch over his forensic utterances. This was a 
delicate way of hinting that false witnesses cost 
little under a religious Government ; and Dufaure, 
who was never foolhardy, took the hint to this 
extent that he let the dynasty alone, and called 



112 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. - 

liimself a ConstitutionaRst. Wliether this would 
have kept him out of hot water, if Prince Polignac 
had remained in office, is a moot point ; but the 
Bourbons having been dismissed, Jules Dufaure 
was enabled to give his opinions full play, and in 
1834 was returned to the Chamber by the electors 
of Saintes as a moderate Liberal and supporter of 
M. Thiers. Party programmes being a little com- 
plicated in those days, it is difficult to define what 
exactly constituted a moderate Liberal ; but one 
may state in a general way that it meant a poli- 
tician who in all things was prepared to "go just a 
trifle beyond the party in power, whichever it 
might be. Thus Dufaure was progressive without 
rashness ; he criticised the estimates, kept a vigi- 
lant look-out on the Government's foreign policy, 
held equally aloof from clericalism and iconoclasm, 
and by the end of five years had made himself so 
respected a name as a shrewd, powerful, yet not 
factious debater, that on the formation of the 
second Soult Cabinet, in 1839, he was called to 
the Ministry of Public Works. In this capacity 
he had to bear the brunt of the discussion as to 
whether the construction of railways should be 



M. DUFAURE. 113 



undertaken wlioUy by Government or be left to 
private companies. The theorists who hold for 
" special men," and had argued that the Minister 
of Public Works should be an engineer, and not a 
barrister, were surprised at the extent of technical 
knowledge which the new man soon acquired ; but 
his parliamentary doings gave the key to but one- 
half of his ability. The best of his labours was 
thrown into departmental work. He would have 
no obstructiveness from understrappers. Red 
tape and routine were things he tabooed from 
the outset. Inventors met with a courteous at- 
tention at his hands, to which officialism had not 
accustomed them ; and the energy he displayed in 
pushing on the cutting of the Corsican roads, 
which were to suppress brigandage, and the com- 
pletion of several much-needed canals, was a thing 
without precedent in those pre-Haussmannite days. 
Unfortunately his tenure of office did not last long 
enough. The Administration of which he was a 
member had no working majority in the House, 
and was overthroAvn by M. Thiers, who, after a six 
months' holding, was compelled in his turn to 
retire in favour of M. Guizot. M. Dufaure had 
I 



114 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

ceased to tMnk on all subjects with M. Tliiers, 
but from motives of personal friendsliip lie did not 
combat liis Ministry. He did not eitber tbink 
entirely with M. Guizot, and, though offered his 
old place at the Public Works Office on the latter's 
accession, he declined it, and settled down as 
leader of a mixed party, which, under his 
guidance, grew more and more liberal every year 
in proportion as the Ministry seemed to grow 
more deeply rooted in office. There were few 
statesmen at that period who did not think M. 
Dufaure would succeed M. Guizot in the Premier- 
ship. He was not popular out of the House, nor 
indeed very much so in it ; but the Centrists 
rallied round him because they knew his parlia- 
mentary worth, and felt that his was a strong and 
firm hand. During the agitation in favour of the 
Reform banquets in 1847-8 he showed how inde- 
pendent this firmness was, by separating himself 
from half his supporters and siding with the 
Ministry. MM. Baroche and Barrot (the former 
afterwards a fanatical Ceesarist, then a zealous 
Liberal) had framed a motion for impeaching the 
Cabinet on account qf this interdiction of the 



M. DUFAURE. 



banquets in question. M. Dufaure courageously 
said — " The Ministers would have deserved im- 
peachment had they allowed the banquets. I 
have no sympathy with the Liberalism that re- 
quires to be fomented by toasts and after-dinner 
philippics. Our principles need to be advocated 
in cold blood. We must speak to the people, 
not over our cups, but from the tribune, through 
the Press, and off electoral platforms." 

This declaration was deemed so high-principled 
that people were stupefied when, a few weeks later 
(the Revolution of 1848 having taken place in the 
meanwhile), M. Dufaure was returned to the Con- 
stituent Assembly as a Democratic Republican, and 
forthwith voted for the exile of the Orleans dynasty, 
to which he had, as Minister, sworn eternal fealty, 
as also for some other new measures by no means 
Conservative. The sarcasms showered upon him 
on this occasion might well have affected a more 
pachydermatous politician ; but the neo-Republican 
met them very quietly by saying that, the Re- 
public having been established through no agency 
of his, he had only submitted to it from necessity, 
but that having once submitted to it, his duty as 



ii6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

a citizen commanded liim to try and make it as 
stable as possible. Conformably to tbese views lie 
voted with the Moderate Republicans, and three 
months after the accession to power of General 
Cavaignac accepted from this well-meaning but 
rather weak Dictator the post of Minister of the 
Interior, which was at that moment the most im- 
portant office in the Cabinet. The great work on 
hand was to prepare the Presidential election, and 
Cavaignac called Dufaure to his aid, much less as 
a servant than as a patron. He looked to Dufaure 
to plead his cause with the bourgeoisie, who were 
not fond of soldiers, and Dufaure did so, throwing 
himself into the contest with almost Yankee en- 
thusiasm, and repeatedly adjuring the nation by 
speeches. Ministerial circulars, and street placards, 
to choose " a man for their President and not a 
name." One would have thought that, after ex- 
hibiting such partisanship, Dufaure would have felt 
pledged not to accept place under a Bonaparte ; 
but within six months of the election (on the 
morrow of which he had resigned), he was back at 
the Home Office, and remained there till Louis 
Napoleon dismissed him because of his domineer- 



M. DUFAURE. 117 



ing fussiness, say the Bonapartists ; because of his 
endeavours to make the President rule by parha- 
mentary means, says the more probable version. 
The Liberals did not. readily forgive Dufaure for 
having sat in a Bonapartist Cabinet, and the ex- 
Minister was once again obliged to defend himself 
against public irony by asserting that so long as a 
man bides faithful to his principles he is not bound 
to cleave with servility to any dynasty or indivi- 
dual. " The man or the family that is to rule is 
the nation's concern," said he, " and not mine." 
The disadvantage of this theory is that it is rather 
too convenient a one when it leads the propounder 
of it to places and emoluments. The public 
might have appreciated M. Dufaure' s amenability 
to conversion, had he remained plain M. Dufaure ; 
but seeing that each modification in his views 
hoisted him a step higher up the ladder, they 
smiled, and associated him with M. Dupin of 
weathercock memory. In this they were wrong-, 
however, for after the covi'p cVetat M. Dufaure 
might have become a Senator and a Chief Justice 
if he had pleased to turn his coat, but he retired 
with dignity from political life, and gave himself 



I [8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

out during tlie next twenty years as a repentant 
Orleanist. 

M. Dufaure's return to power last year after his 
long eclipse was considered by everybody as a 
fitting and fortunate thing ; and the ex-Minister of 
Louis Philippe, of Cavaignac, and of Prince Louis 
Napoleon, has been during the past twelvemonth 
the most valuable and trusted colleague of M. 
Thiers. His departmental duties require tact. He 
has to appoint judges, magistrates, and procurators ; 
and when this is done he must fulfil the yet more 
delicate task of keeping these right learned per- 
sonages from betraying too much zeal in their 
avocations. A French procurator is always inclined 
to make his presence and his political opinions 
felt ; M. Dufaure is trying to teach his procurators 
that they have no right to possess any opinions. 
As to his judges, he inherited them from the 
Empire, and his chief concern is to convince them 
that they need not be afraid of him. If M. 
Dufaure were younger, one might expect him to 
introduce reforms into the French judicial system 
— to reduce the preposterous number of judges, to 
institute trial by jury for civil causes, to arrange 



M. DUFAURE. 119 



tliat judges should be promoted by seniority, and 
by the election of their colleagues, so as to render 
the judicial bench completely independent of Go- 
vernment, and to abolish the " instruction secrete," 
which Emile Ollivier condemned, and purposed 
suppressing, if he could, two years ago. But at 
seventy-four a statesman has not much propensity 
to innovate, and perhaps in this particular instance 
it is as well that it should be so. French Repub- 
licanism has earned such a character for demolition, 
that it is as well a few abuses should be suffered to 
linger under it at first, in order that there may be 
no terror among those Conservative souls who can 
never see a cobweb swept away without clamouring 
that the whole house will come down with it. 

Jules- Armand-Stanislas Dufaure was born at 
Saujon, in the Charente Infdrieure, on the 4 th of 
December, 1798, and studied law in Paris. At 
the general elections of 1871 he was chosen for 
three departments, and now sits for the Charente 
Inferieure among the members of the Left Centre. 
He voted in favour of the preliminaries of peace, 
the abolition of the laws of exile, and the mainte- 
nance of the commercial treaties. He is, perhaps, 



120 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

a solitary example of an ex-Minister of three 
French Governments who is not a Knight of the 
Legion of Honour. He has also the rather rare 
distinction of not being a voluminous writer ; and 
has published nothing but a few official reports. 



M. ALEXANDEE DUMAS. 

A BOUT five-and-tliirty years ago there began to 
be seen in tbe house of that famous spendthrift 
of money and genius, called Alexandre Dumas, a 
boy who now describes himself as having been 
vivacious and playful, but whom his contem- 
poraries state to have been a reserved lad — ^proud, 
and precociously sharp at retorting whenever his 
vanity was hurt. He was ten years old, and came 
home from his school on Sundays and holidays to 
be shaken hands with by his father, and then left 
to fill up his time as he pleased, or as he could. 
The house was full of literary toadies, Bohemians 
and impecunious artists. These formed the great 
Dumas' court, burned incense under his face, ate 
his dinners, borrowed his money, and forgot to 
repay it ; and passed his boy about from hand to 
hand as an artistic curiosity that was to be 
admired, or as a pet-dog that was to be spoilt. 



122 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

No youth, as tlie author of La Dame aux Camelias 
has since acknowledged, could have been worse 
brought up. At school, the colossal popularity of 
his father — for it was colossal at that period — 
threw its reflex on him, and made him as distinc- 
tive an object for curiosity and importunate ques- 
tions as if he had always been dressed in scarlet. 
At home, the very unedifying scenes he witnessed, 
the easy manners of the ladies in whose company 
he was thrown, and the base cringing of the male 
crew who lived on his father's prodigalities, early 
tinged his thoughts with a streak of that bitterness 
which time never quite removes. In this fashion 
the lad grew up until he was eighteen, at which 
age his father placed a roll of bank notes in his 
hands and spoke in this paternal wise : " When a 
man inherits the name of Alexandre Dumas he 
should lead the life of a prince, dine at the Cafe 
Anglais, and be generous with his money. Go and 
amuse yourself. When you have spent that you 
shall have more. If you contract debts I will pay 
them." Nothing could be plainer or more con- 
ducive to morality. Young Dumas threw himself 
headlong into the torrent of Parisian life, ran 



M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 



obediently into debt, drew, witliout stint or scru- 
ple, on bis well-pleased father, and was never 
lectured by the father save on the meanness of 
parsimony. But this healthy sort of existence 
must necessarily experience checks when father 
and son both lead it together. The elder Dumas 
practised all he preached ; and by degrees the 
cash-bowls on his desk (liis money was never 
locked up in drawers, but lay in bowls, open to all 
comers) began to be more and more often empty. 
One day when the son came to levy supplies from 
them he found they were in possession of the 
bailiffs, along with the rest of the house's furni- 
ture ; and though his father cried to him with one 
of his hearty laughs that this was nothing, and 
that money was as fast earned as spent, yet this 
little episode set young Dumas thinking that if he 
should suddenly become an orphan he should find 
himself face to face with his own debts and his 
father's, possessed of no assets and no profession, 
and, besides all this, having a sister to support. 
It may be that some less material thoughts min- 
gled with these, and told him that the life he had 
been spending was not a very noble one, and that 



124 ^EN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

a man lias otlier missions to fulfil than those of 
rolling about Boulevards in a phaeton and signing 
his name to I U's. Anyhow, the resolution 
he took in the course of one day, and unflinch- 
ingly adhered to during several years, revealed in 
him a firmness of character and an honesty of 
purpose which could not have come from parental 
example, and must have been innate. He severed 
himself completely from his foi'mer mode of living, 
his friends, and associations. He discarded his 
phaeton and grooms, sublet his fine lodgings, sold 
off his furniture, dressed plainly ; and having con- 
voked his creditors, told them with frankness that 
he was unable to pay them then, but that, if they 
would give him time, he would work till he had 
discharged his obligations to the last farthing. 
One would have been glad to record that the 
creditors met this assurance in a believing spirit ; 
but the fact is, they tried to lodge him in Clichy. 
He eluded them, however ; took refuge at Fon- 
tainebleau in a small inn room, for which he paid 
30 sous a day, and there during two years worked 
like a man. He had already written a novel, an 
absurd book, called "Les Aventures de Quatre 



M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 125 

Femmes et d'lm Perroquet." He now clianged liis 
style, and, perceiving that lie liad not imagination 
enougli to compose sensational novels like his 
father, set himself to the minute, analytical pour- 
trayal of such social manners as he had observed. 
As his lot had been cast in the . very loosest of 
social spheres, " La Dame aux Camelias " was the 
first result of his observations. This novel was a 
fair success. Then he wrote the dramatised ver- 
sion of the tale and submitted it to his father, 
who, not suspecting him of having much brains, 
was startled at the dramatic power of the work, 
and, with tears of pride, as he himself often 
repeated, accepted it for the Theatre Historique. 
That theatre, however, like many other undertak- 
ings of the great man's, was at this time on the 
eve of bankruptcy, and young Dumas was soon 
obliged to set off with his piece on a round of 
managerial visits, which lasted two years. Oddly 
enough, it was in most cases his name which 
damaged him. Alexandre Dumas the elder, hav- 
ing been the most successful author of twenty 
preceding years, had naturally accumulated a very 
satisfactory collection of rivals, and it was feared 



126 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

tliat some of these would be only too delighted to 
hit a blow at the father by organizing a cabal 
against the son. Other managers took alarm at 
the immorality of the drama, and this immorality 
also disquieted the authorities, for when La Dame 
aux Camelias was eventually accepted by the 
Vaudeville its performance was prohibited by the 
Home Minister, M. Ldon Faucher. Is it to this 
that we must attribute M. Dumas' distaste for 
Republican institutions ? Certain it is that the 
following year, when the Empire had been esta- 
blished, M. de Morny actively bestirred himself to 
get the piece licensed, and, of course, succeeded. 
He had a nice little theory of his own, this 
M. de Morny, on the morality of stage pieces. 
Every piece Avas acceptable according to his no- 
tions, so long as it excited the public to talk on 
other topics than politics ; thus La Dame aux 
Oam^elias would be moral, and Ruy Bias not so. 
The moral piece was therefore performed in 18.52, 
and took the actors who played it, the manager, 
the audience, and soon the whole town by storm. 
It was the most startling success on record. M. 
Dumas' astonished creditors emerged from their 



M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 



lairs, pounced upon liim, and liad him arrested 
eight times within a fortnight. But the manager 
was there to pay, for the young author had 
become in one evening almost as famous a man as 
his father in thirty years. 

There is not a Parisian but knows the " Dumas 
Fils," who then took his place among the half- 
dozen princes of French dramatic art. A tall, 
strongly-built man, with a bald forehead, woolly 
hair, moustaches with wax to them, and keen grey 
eyes, he was not unlike his father in face, but 
seemed to have no single mental characteristic in 
common with him. Cold and rather haughty in 
his manner, he wielded a species of wit which fell 
upon its victims like the thwacks of a well-made 
riding-whip. When he paid his father one of 
those occasional visits which filial duty com- 
manded, the greater Dumas' sycophantic familiars 
all shrunk away, not liking to risk a weal from 
that terrible tongue, and even Dumas Pere him- 
self felt uncomfortable in the presence of this son 
who had grown up to be so unlike him, and 
whose domesticated, orderly ways now began to 
strike him constantly in the light of a reproach. 



128 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

It was often said that father and son had quar- 
relled, but this was never true. The elder Dumas 
had too warm a heart, and the younger was too 
good a son, for a collision to be possible. Only 
they saw but little of each other, because when 
one man in a family has banned debt as a pesti- 
lence, whilst the other persists in looking upon it 
as the natural state of man — when one picks his 
society, and the other admits all men to his fellow- 
ship — when one is all sentiment, and the other all 
sense, intercourse is apt to bq unprofitable. So 
young Dumas kept to his own set of friends — a 
brilliant artistic set, in whose company all the 
superficial ice in his nature thawed — and he 
worked. This point must be dwelt on, that the 
highest of his productions is and always has been 
the result of thought and labour. He does not, 
as his father did, sit down of a morning with six- 
and-thirty blank pages quarto size before him, and 
make it his duty to cover them with writing of 
some sort before going out. Having got an idea 
— or a paradox, for to his essentially French mind 
it is all one — into his head, he turns the same over 
patiently by himself, discusses it with his friends, 



3f. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 129 

and after twelve months, sometimes two years, of 
tliis mental incubating, produces Diane de Lys, Le 
Demi Monde, Le Fils Naturel, or La Question 
d' Argent. Whilst the Empire flourished it was 
the younger Dumas' great good fortune to be free 
from any fear lest his pieces should not attract 
attention enough. Politics being hushed, the 
starting of any emotional social problem was like 
the firing of a shell amid perfect stillness ; and as 
each new piece of Scribe's successor at the Gym- 
nase was brought out, the author had the inex- 
pressible satisfaction of seeing society wrangle 
fiercely as to whether he were an earnest censor Oj. 
social abuses or a corrupter of public morals. This 
is always pleasant ; indeed, fortune can do nothing 
more for one. 

But, yes ; it can make of one an homme serieux, 
as M, Alexandre Dumas aspires to be thought at 
this hour. Having played under the Empire 
something of the part which Alcibiades's tailless 
dog is popularly supposed to have filled at Athens, 
he now seeks to be one of the oracles of the day, 
— to rank, in fact, among the " Men of the Third 
Republic." Since M. Thiers has guided France, 



130 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

M. Dumas has launclied two new " psychological " 
comedies and three pamphlets, all of which tend, 
as he asserts, to the regeneration of France ; and 
the latest of which (the pamphlets) has been in most 
Parisians' hands for the last month,* and is likely 
to linger in Parisian women's memories for yet 
some weeks to come. But it may be doubted 
whether anything that M. Dumas writes in his 
present frame of mind can evoke results deeper 
than a succes de curiosite, or will survive him ; • 
and this for the reason that, falling into an error 
very common with professed censors, he has got 
to paint his countrymen much blacker than they 
really are. M. Dumas fancies himself still under 
the Empire. He forgets what bereavement^ and 
distress have passed through most French homes. 
Taking cases of crime and depravity that were 
monstrous, and exceptional even at the worst of 
times, he holds them up to his countrymen, and 
bids them see themselves as in a mirror ; so that 
if one were to collect M. Dumas' verdicts on his 
countrymen from the plays and pamphlets recently 
published, one would learn that the French were 

* September, 1872. 



M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 



politically and socially, morally and intellectually, 
tlie most flippant, unprincipled, debauched, and 
ignorant people under heaven. Against this judg- 
ment one may be allowed to protest. There are 
really few countries where honesty is more com- 
mon, practical morality more deep-rooted, and 
respect for the law more general than in France. 
To ignore this argues either a very cursory study 
of the national character, or a cynicism grown 
chronic, and incapacitating its owner from seeing 
things as they are. But perhaps M. Dumas is 
aware that the French love to see their foibles 
scoffed at by one of themselves, and possibly the 
object of his numerous bits of " psj^chology " is 
merely to gratify their passion. If so, some friend 
should warn M. Dumas that a doctor who would 
prescribe a reckless course of astringents, even 
when pressed by his patient to do it, would con- 
duce neither to that patient's health, nor to his 
own good fame as a physician. 

Many different accounts are given of M. Dumas' 
birth. His father announced it thus : — " On the' 
29th of July, 1824, while the Duke de Mont- 
pensier was coming into the world, was born to 



132 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

me a Duke de Chartres, Place des Italiens, No. 1." 
As soon as he was old enough to go to school, 
Alexandre Dumas was sent to the establishment 
of a M. Goubaux, who conducted two kinds of 
business at the same time ; and manufactured 
a scene in a broad farce for the Ambigu 
Comique, on the margin of a page of Cicero. 
The leisure he could steal from his duties as 
an instructor of youth was also frequently de- 
voted to the task of putting in a dramatic form 
the honest socialist romances of Eugene Sue. 
From the custody of this lively pedagogue, the 
boy was transferred to the College Bourbon, where 
he distinguished himself as a silent and laborious 
student. He read everything that came in his 
way, and one day his father found him diligently 
perusing M. Gerardin's novel, " Emile." 

"What do you think of the book?" asked the 
elder Dumas. 

" I think," answered the lad slowly, "that when 
a father refuses to give his name to his own 



Well?" 

The son should take it." 



M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 133 

" Take mine, then, at once," returned his father, 
and henceforth he was formally acknowledged, 
and unceasingly bragged about, by that prolific 
writer. Indeed, they both bragged about each 
other. The father called his son " a Wonder of 
Nature;" the son called his father "a Prodigy." 
They felt the gayest and most good-humoured 
affection for each other, that of the younger man 
being very tender and protecting. " My father," 
he used to say, "is a great child I had when I was 
little." 

M. Alexandre Dumas first presented his celebrated 
piece, Le Demi Monde, to the Comedie Fran9aise, 
where it was well received, and well paid for ; but 
Mademoiselle Rachel having taken a dislike to 
him, she used her influence to have its perform- 
ance indefinitely postponed. ' M. Dumas im- 
mediately bought back his play, with money 
borrowed from M. Montigny, and now writes 
almost exclusively for the Gymnase. The amount 
of his gains as a dramatic author is very large, and 
probably every work he produces can hardly be 
worth less than ten or twelve thousand pounds to 
him ; besides which, nearly all his plays keep 



r34 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

permanent possession of the Freneli stage, at Lome 
and abroad, and bring him in a fine income, 
from his rights of authorship. He is therefore 
very rich, and, it is pleasing to add, very generous 
and very charitable. 



THE DUO D'AUDIFFEET-PASQUIEE. 

rrHE Due d'Audiffret-Pasquier is the one " new 
man " wliom the recent French Session has 
produced. Gaston, Count, afterwards Duke 
dAudiffret-Pasquier, was horn at Paris in 1815. 
He is grand-nephew and adopted son of the 
Chancellor Baron Pasquier, who was raised to a 
dukedom by royal ordinance of King Louis Philippe, 
dated 16th of December, 1844. The present 
duke was declared heir to the title and estates of 
Pasquier by the terms of this patent, and it was 
confirmed by Napoleon IH. That was all which 
could be said of his grace worth hearing till 1871, 
when he was returned to the National Assembly 
as member for the Department of the Orne by 
60,226 free and independent voters residing in 
the neighbourhood of his landed property. A 
year ago he was politically unknoT\Ti; if an 
Orleanist restoration were effected to-morrow, he 



136 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

would probably be Minister of Finance in a 
Cabinet having M. Casimir Perier, his brother-in- 
law, for its chief, the Due de Broglie for its 
Foreign Secretary, Due Decazes at the Home 
Office, and M. Saint Marc Girardin at the 
Education Board. 

How long he would agree with these distin- 
guished men is another question, for he has a 
great deal of that earnestness which makes politi- 
cians love the front seats on Ministerial benches, 
and we should doubtless soon be having a Pasquier 
party and a Broglie party united in considering 
M. Perier objectionable from his Thiersist ante- 
cedents ; but divided on the capital point as to 
who should take M. Perier' s place when once he 
had been supplanted. The contention would no 
doubt end by each of the gentlemen having his 
turn at the chief office ; and then, so far as can be 
at present judged, M, d'Audiffret-Pasquier would 
show himself a good Prime Minister of the active 
and meddling kind — well meaning but obstinate, 
shrewd but not thoughtful or learned, honest but 
being daily taunted with jobbery by the Bonapart- 
ists and extreme Republicans, who would be on 



THE DUC D'AUDIFFRET-PASQUIER. 137 

tlie look-ont for the slightest financial abuses in 
his administration in order to magnify and con- 
trast them with the two virtuous speeches which 
have brought M. d'Audiffret-Pasquier to celebrity. 
These two speeches were those delivered by the 
duke in his capacity as chairman of the Commis- 
sion for investigating the war contracts. 

After the peace with Germany, the clamours 
about official jobbery and peculation were so vehe- 
ment and universal, that the Assembly was obliged 
to appoint a Commission of Inquiry, armed with 
more than ordinary prying powers. The Commis- 
sion at its first meeting proceeded to elect a chair- 
man ; but the choice, under the circumstances, was 
extremely difficult to make. A man was required 
who should be personally clever, bear a popular 
name, or hold such high rank as to command 
respect, and yet be free from all ties to any 
political party. Such men are not common, and 
it was really a windfall that sent M. d'Audiffret- 
Pasquier, a duke, the son of an able financier 
(Receiver-General from 1839 to 1856), and the 
nephew of the much-respected Chancellor Pasquier 
— a man who had never pledged himself to any 



138 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

political creed, and yet one wlio, in his sliort 
parliamentary career, liad already earned a name 
for most commendable zeal in private committee 
work. There are many members who, like 
M. d'Audiffret, shine greatly in committees, but 
who, less favoured than he, never get the chance 
of a sensational speech to hoist them into public 
fame. They are generally quiet men, with a taste 
for toil, who come down to Versailles by the early 
Paris trains, and carry sheaves of statistical papers 
under their arms. They read the yellow books 
(French for blue books), muse over the estimates, 
and are more respected than liked in official circles. 
But their grateful and lazier colleagues in com- 
mittee appreciate them to the full, and mark their 
sense of this by electing them to report on bills. 
This means that the honoured and hard-working 
member shuts himself up in his study and writes 
with painful conscientiousness one of those elaborate 
documents which take three hours to read, and are 
as remarkable for the grace of style they exhibit 
as for their magic potency in causing the House to 
thin. On the morrow of the reading, various 
newspapers dub the report " eloquent " or " soul- 



THE DUC D'AUDIFFRET'PASQUIER. 139 

stirring;" tlie members wlio speak to its contents 
asperse it witli a word of civil praise, and tliis 
constitutes all tlie liard-working member's reward. 
The solid glory is reaped by the haranguers who 
have not heard the report read, have at most 
skimmed through it in its printed form, but who 
hold this superiority over the reporter, that they 
possess the gift of ready tongues. M. d'Audiffret- 
Pasquier, a reporter who could speak as well as 
work and indite, was an exception to the general 
rule, and when people saw this small, sallow, and 
rather clerkly-looking man stand uj) and beard 
that still dreaded champion of Csesarism, Kouher, 
it took everybody by surprise. The exordium of 
his thrilling speech on the 22nd May was like the 
rattling of war drums, and every one of his phrases 
came up fast and firm as companies of soldiers 
at the double. There was no halting for the right 
word, no uncertainty of gesture. Facts, accusa- 
tions, statistics, deductions, all followed each other 
with the rapidity of a charge, and when on his 
apostrophising his antagonist with the words Tare, 
legiones redde ! the whole House rose, quivering 
in its excitement and acclaiming, the sight was one 



140 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

not to be forgotten. There may be various styles 
of eloquence, and tbat style may be tbe most 
respectable whicli allows the speaker to remain 
cool and his audience to sit quiet ; but if it still be 
oratory to bring seven hundred gentlemen to their 
legs with moist eyes, hoarse throats, and extended 
hands, then assuredly the Due d'Audiffret-Pasquier 
is an orator. 

His second speech, however, that in which he 
overhauled the contracts of Gambetta's Govern- 
ment, was much less successful than the first, and 
this for a plain reason ; it was a speech made to 
order, delivered unwillingly, and based upon an 
unjust view of facts. M. d'Audiffret having 
assailed the Empire, simple people had clamoured, 
" Now you must trounce Gambetta, or else it will 
be unfair." And, accordingly, M. d'Audiffret had 
to set to work to please this simple people, or 
rather the six Bonapartist papers who had egged 
them on. But the positions of Gambetta and of 
the Empire were not similar, and it was only an 
astute and unscrupulous Bonapartist who could 
pretend they were. The Empire was an esta- 
blished Government which had never been stinted 



THE DUC HAUDIFFRET-PASQUIER. 141 

of money, and if it had honestly employed the 
funds entrusted to it France could have kept any 
coalition of armies in the world from invading its 
soil. Instead of that, one could not probe an 
Imperialist budget without detecting corruption in 
every branch, high or low, of the public service. 
Supplies voted for one department were transferred 
to another by the system of virements ; millions 
of francs set down every year under the 
heading of artillery experiments were expended 
goodness knows how, for there was no keeping any 
watch over them ; other sums were voted for 
changes in military uniforms, whereas it has been 
discovered since, that most changes of this kind 
were effected at the expense of the contractors, 
who not only charged nothing to the Treasury, 
but even paid heavy bribes to big people in order 
to obtain the contracts. Again, fortresses, ships, 
and arsenals were reported fully armed and stored, 
when in many cases they were empty ; and a 
French Admiral has recently acknowledged that if 
France had gone to war with a maritime Power 
the collapse of her fleet must have been as utter 
as that of her army. It amazes one now to think 



142 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

of how tlie French, nation was hoodwinked, and 
the more so as the officials of the Empire had 
ended by growing reckless with impimity, and 
flaunted their ill-gotten gains defiantly in the face 
of the public. One could enumerate half-a-dozen 
Ministers who, having entered office penniless, 
were enabled after a comparatively short tenure of 
office to buy landed estates, and build sumptuous 
town houses. Nor did all this cease when the 
nation's disasters had commenced. Whilst the 
enemy was actually on French soil, and whilst 
tearful proclamations from the Empress Eegent 
were adjuring all classes to remain united and to 
trust in Government, people in high places were 
buying up rifles, horses, and cattle, by the agency 
of secret friends, from whom they repurchased 
them on behalf of the nation at a profit to them- 
selves of 17 francs per rifle, 75 francs per horse, 
and 30 francs a head per ox. These are all facts 
which M. d'Audiffret-Pasquier was in a position to 
prove. On the other hand, what was Gambetta's 
predicament ? This unfortunate Dictator was sur- 
rounded on all hands by enemies ; there was 
scarcely a soul bevond the circle of his own friends 



THE DUC D'AUDIFFRET-PASQUIER. 143 

whom he dared trust. Bonapartists were defaming 
him in the villages, and working persistently to 
ruin the credit of his Government by assuring 
London and Belgian bankers that all debts con- 
tracted in his name would be repudiated. He was 
daily assailed by hordes of speculating contractors, 
concerning whose honesty, having no police at his 
command like that of the Empire, it was almost 
impossible to enlighten himself; besides which, 
with the Germans making giant strides over the 
whole country, contracts had to be concluded on 
the spur of the moment, there being no time for 
long parleyings. It is somewhat puerile under 
such circumstances to come and complain that 
£1,200 should have been bestowed amiss on one 
occasion, and £300 on another. The only wonder 
is that Gambetta's confidence should not have led 
him to be duped out of sums a hundred times 
more considerable in those desperate efforts he 
made to save his country. The Due d'Audiffret 
failed to establish any parallel between the Empire 
and Gambetta, and, being a shrewd man, he must 
have felt this even whilst he was speaking. All 
he did was to exasperate the Extreme Left, Avho 



144 il/^iV OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

were disposed to be on good terms witli liim be- 
fore, and to earn some very compromising applause 
from those gentlemen on the Extreme Right who 
are never so pleased as when Republicans are being 
put to shame. These were meagre results, and 
disappointing to outsiders who admire good states- 
manship without reference to party. In swelling 
the canting chorus against Gambetta, and putting 
the blunders of this sometimes erring, but always 
honest, politician into the same bag as the turpi- 
tudes of the Emj)ire, he showed that he lacked 
judgment or impartiality. It is this which impels 
one to predict that he would make only a tame 
Prime Minister. 

But M. d'Audiffret is still in the youth of 
politics. He is only fifty-seven, and has probably 
not yet allowed his defects to grow stiff upon him. 
He may still unlearn some of his prejudices, and 
if he do so his eloquence, his capacity for hard 
work, and his sterling hatred of dishonesty, must 
make of him a valuable public servant. He is 
much liked in the Department of the Orne, where 
he resides, though he has never been able to 
acquire there that seignorial influence which the 



THE DUC D'AUDIFFRET-PASQUIER. 145 

Broglies, tlie Luynes, and tlie Larocliefoucaulds still 
wield around their domains, all revolutions not- 
withstanding. M. d'Audiffret's enemies pretend 
that this chagrins him, and that he is one of those 
who would have the influence of the nobility re- 
vived on the model of the English aristocracy, 
hereditary Upper Chamber included. That is in 
all likelihood an exaggeration, for M. d'Audiffret 
does not talk like a man who would like to see his 
country begin a retrogressive voyage up stream. 
However, it is perhaps a pity that he should be a 
duke of such recent creation, for if his dignity were 
older he might attach less importance to it. He 
was allowed by special grace of Napoleon III. 
(1862) to inherit the title of his uncle, the Baron 
Pasquier, who- had been made a duke by the 
citizen King; and it is, by the way, one of the pet 
complaints of the Bonapartists thixt this nobleman 
having accepted a signal favour from the Emperor, 
has now turned round on his " benefactor." M. 
d'Audiffret, it is needless to - say, applied to the 
Emperor, as he would have applied to the Shah 
of Thibet, had that monarch been in possession of 
France, and he did so simply because his uncle 
L 



146 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

had requested Mm by will to take that step. But, 
once again, there is no blinking the fact, that if 
M. d'Audiffret had inherited his coronet from the 
crusading times, like the Harcourts or the Noailles, • 
he might have afforded to be, not more Liberal 
possibly, but more Republican. That so little has 
been known till lately of M, d'Audiffret-Pasquier 
in public life is perhaps the highest compliment 
which can be paid to him. 



M. EENEST PICAED. 

r\F tlie men who composed tlie 4tli September 
Government there is one respecting whom 
even the most vehement Monarchists have always 
spoken good-naturedly, and this is M. Louis- Joseph- 
Ernest Picard, who is at present French Minister at 
Brussels, but who, if all goes well, will be in the 
Cabinet again before long, and probably remain 
there for some time. In person he is stout, plea- 
sant featured, and hale, giving one rather the idea 
of an Englishman than a Frenchman. In fact, 
both in countenance and manners he reminds one 
not a little of Lord Granville, having the same 
bright and knowing smile, the same voice, buoyanf 
and fresh as healthy weather, and a like skill in 
putting opponents to silence by witticisms judi- 
ciously launched. Men of such a kind are certain 
to succeed in life, because their presence is grateful ; 
but whilst they achieve populaiity by their social 



148 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

qualities, tliey are apt in critical moments to dis- 
play an amount of tact, firmness, and statesman- 
ship which takes the public by surprise. This has 
been the case with M. Picard. Born at Paris in 
1821, he was called to the Bar in 1844, became 
Doctor of Laws in 1846, and had the good 
luck at the outset of his career, and by no other 
magic than that^of his pleasing looks and winning 
character, to attract the attention of the great bar- 
rister Lionville, who took him in hand and ended 
by giving him his daughter. Picard did not make 
much way so long as Louis Philippe and the 
Second Eepublic lasted ; but after the cowp d'etat 
he soon took up a position as one of the best light 
skirmishers at the Palais de Justice. He was not 
a noted speaker. His utterances flowed so na- 
turally that people did not count them for oratory ; 
and many fell into the mistake of supposing that 
an advocate who pleaded so colloquially, addressing 
the judges in an easy, humorous, and cool-tempered 
strain, without ruffling them or exciting himself, 
was not one to be trusted with important briefs. 
Picard' s practice consisted chiefly of press c^ses, 
and suits in which the litigants y/ere anxious 



31. ERNEST PICARD. 149 

rather to turn their adversaries into ridicule than 
to pound them with heavy rhetoric. Now and 
then, however, a big brief would fall to his lot, and 
he would carry it through with caution, spirit, and 
success. But popular fallacies are not things to 
be eradicated in a hurry, and as the man who, 
having once been fee'd to solve a riddle, could 
never get it out of his friends' heads that riddle- 
guessing was his vocation, so Picard had to submit 
to the imputation of being "le spirituel Picard," 
but nothing more. 

However, a reputation for wit served Picard 
better in Paris than probably a renown for erudi- 
tion would have done. Having amassed a little 
money, he had invested it in shares of the Siede 
newspaper, and been elected by his brother share- 
holders a member of the board of managers. The 
Siecle was then the most powerful of the Opposi- 
tion journals. It had a circulation of over 70,000 ; 
and when Picard brought it to support the candi- 
dature of Emile Ollivier at the general election of 
1857, Ollivier's success was assured. Picard was 
one of the few Liberals who at first put implicit 
trust in Ollivier. The Republican party did not 



150 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

mucli fancy this man, and it occurred to many of 
them that Picard himself, who championed his 
friend's cause with so much warmth, would be a 
far better and livelier representative. Accordingly, 
the. next year, on the occurrence of a vacancy in 
the 4th Circumscription of Paris, Picard was nomi- 
nated and returned without much difficulty, the 
tacit understanding between himself and his elec- 
tors seeming to be that he should act as the comic 
man in the troupe of Five Liberals who played the 
Opposition parts in the Chamber. These five 
were, including Picard, Favre, OUivier, Dr. Henon 
(since Mayor of Lyons), and Darimon, who subse- 
quently rallied to the Empire, lost his seat for his 
pains, and was imperially compensated with a 
Consulate. They were a compact and valorous 
little band, every one of whose speeches (when 
parliamentary reports began to be published again 
in 1860) was devoured like bread in famine time 
by the politically-starving community, but Picard's 
speeches were the best relished of all. They were 
full of those epigrams which are as the salt of life 
to Frenchmen, and they conveyed truths none the 
less unpalatable to Government because wrapped 



M. ERNEST PICARD. 151 

in humorous language. Picard was tlie bugbear 
of the Duke de Morny, that tortuous-minded but 
brilliant and courtly President of the Chamber, 
who, himself a wit, had found no one to cross 
swords with until this supple-tongued barrister 
came and proved himself his match. It was a 
pleasure to watch the two, both genial and self- 
possessed, as Frenchmen can be even when ex- 
changing the most cruel thrusts ; but Picard 
generally had the advantage, because his antago- 
nist had so many more vulnerable points than 
himself " After all, M. Picard, I suspect you are 
at heart a Red Republican," exclaimed De Morny 
one day. " I suppose you call us Red," was 
Picard's quiet retort, " because there is so much of 
our blood on your hands." At the elections in 
1868 Picard was again returned by an enthusiastic 
majority, being one of that list of nine Opposi- 
tionists (Thiers, Favre, Pelletan, Gueroult, Ollivier, 
Darimon, Simon, Garnier-Pages, Picard), who, sup- 
ported by a coalition of the entire anti-Bonapartist 
press in Paris, swept the official candidates com- 
pletely out of the field, and led to the retirement 
from political life of M. de Persigny, then Home 



152 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Minister. This triumpli was so crusliing that, 
when the general election of 1869 was at hand, 
the Government "revised" all the circumscrip- 
tions ; that is, cooked them in such wise as to 
render the interests in them most conflicting. 
Thus, Picard's circumscription was made to include 
the aristocratic quarter of the Madeleine and part 
of the democratic Faubourg du Temple ; Ministers 
calculating that between two such stools the Oppo- 
sition candidate must come to the ground. But 
in this they were wrong. The Madeleine and the 
Temple agreed perfectly as to the "spirituel 
Picard," who came back to the Chamber more 
popular than ever — so popular, indeed, that having 
been elected simultaneously in the Department of 
Herault, and having decided for party reasons to 
sit as member for the latter place, his Parisian 
constituents were seriously annoyed. They sent 
him a deputation fifty yards long, who assured 
him that he Avas their man, a Parisian every inch, 
who represented their tone of mind, and would be 
quite thrown away upon a bumpkin constituency. 
Picard answered, laughing, that he should certainly 
return and ask Paris for a seat if the peasantry 



M. ERNEST PICARD. 



got tired of him, and this seemed to soothe his 
memoriahsts. Less than eighteen months after- 
wards, the 4 th September Revolution took place ; 
and M. Picard was appointed Minister of Finance 
on the following day. He proved a busy member 
of the new Government. His first act was to 
abolish the stamp-tax on newspapers, and to post- 
pone the presentation of commercial bills of 
exchange. On the 25th of January, 1871, he 
accompanied M. Jules Favre to Versailles to treat 
for the capitulation of Paris, and obtained the 
200,000,000 francs fixed for the ransom of the 
city. On the 8th of February he was elected to 
the National Assembly for the two Departments of 
Seine-et-Oise and Meuse, and decided to sit as 
deputy for the Meuse. On the formation of M. 
Thiers's first Cabinet (19th of February), he be- 
came Minister of the Interior, resigned on the 
31st of May, and was named Governor of the 
Bank of France on the 5th of June ; but refus- 
ing that arduous post, he Avas sent as Envoy 
to Belgium on the 10th of November follow- 
ing. 

Now it is the fashion at this moment for all the 



154 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

dolts in France — for all those born lackeys who 
can never hear talk of freedom without feeling 
themselves insulted — to fling mud at the " men of 
the 4th September." They say that if the Revo- 
lution of that day had not occurred, peace would 
have been made after Sedan, and France spared at 
least three out of her five milliards indemnitj. 
That is all very well ; but who was to make peace 
after Sedan ? The Empire was not overturned on 
the 4th September ; it fell like a rotten fruit from 
a tree ; and the men who took its place were no 
more responsible for the Revolution than a person 
would be who was swept to a high spot by a head- 
long torrent. No doubt it would have been better 
if everything had been done regularly — if the 
Corps Legislatif had voted the downfall of the 
Empire, and set up a new Government, with M. 
Thiers at its head. But M. Thiers would not 
have made peace. The people were resolved upon 
two things — the dismissal of the dynasty which 
had disgraced them, and the continuance of the 
war until the invader was repulsed from the soil, 
or until the levies en Tnasse of the entire nation 
had been routed. A man who had talked of peace 



M. ERNEST PICARD. 155 

would have been torn to bits in the streets ; a 
statesman who had signed a treaty surrendering 
Alsace with two milliards would have covered 
himself with eternal infamy ; and, worse than 
that, he would have afforded those very Bonapart- 
ists who are now croaking about the prolongation 
of the war a pretext for exclaiming, " If it had not 
been for those Eepublicans who overthrew the 
Empire, Palikao would have raised provincial 
arniies, which, acting in conjunction with Paris, 
would have expelled the Germans without its 
costing us an inch of soil or a farthing of money." 
The fact is, the defence of France by the men of 
the 4th September will be remembered with pride 
in national annals so long as the history of the 
terrible war itself is remembered. It may be that 
the defence was rash, and that language was used 
on some occasions out of keeping with France's 
shattered strength ; but he will be a poor French- 
man Avho, twenty years hence, does not feel grate- 
ful with all his heart to those men who, accepting 
the task of government from predecessors who had 
left them neither soldiers, money, nor arms, con- 
tinued the struggle against invasion until the con 



156 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

querors themselves admitted tliat the vanquislied 
had retrieved their honour. 

Ernest Pieard was the Minister who settled down 
most easily to his work. In a country where re- 
volutions are frequent, it is some comfort to see 
new men arrive who do not plunge into their 
departments like bulls into china shops. Pieard 
dismissed nobody, kept at arm's length all those 
begging gentlemen who march at the tail of poli- 
tical parties like the looters behind armies, jobbed 
no friend into a sinecure, and displayed an amount 
of personal dignity which at once anchored him to 
the esteem of all his clerks, great and small. As 
for the public, it was with something like wonder 
they saw pensions, salaries, and rentes paid as 
punctually during the siege as if nothing had 
happened, and their confidence in the new Finance 
Minister grew strong. In Cabinet Councils Pieard' s 
suggestions were short, liberal, and practical. He 
was for adjourning all political questions until an 
Assembly had been elected, and for confining him- 
self and colleagues exclusively to siege measures. 
In this he was different from the section who 
busied themselves, with rather ill-timed party zeal, 



M. ERNEST PICARD. 



about tlie re-naming of streets and tlie destruction 
of Imperial mementoes, and it was even whispered 
among some of tlie hotter subordinates that his 
fervour for the good cause was turning tepid. 
Picard gave answer to this, by saving the Govern- 
ment from the insurgents on 31st October, and by 
saving the insurgents from the Government after- 
wards. Being at the Hotel de Ville at the mo- 
ment when Flourens' bands arrived there, he lost 
no time in parleying with the mutiny, but slipped 
out of the building, and hurried to give Trochu's 
second in command orders to march all the Breton 
battalions to the rescue. The general to whom he 
spoke hapjDened to be one of those jolter-headed 
warriors who seem to think it blasphemy in a 
civilian to speak on military matters, and he hesi- 
tated. " I beg you to remark," answered Picard, 
" that I have not asked you for your ojDinion. You 
will obey me or not. But if you refuse, I shall 
cancel your commission of my own authority, and 
appoint on the spot another general to take your 
place." The general, who had never heard such 
knguage, strode off in great surprise to do as he 
was bid ; and Picard, on his side, hastened to the 



158 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Finance Office, wliere, finding a revolutionary quo- 
rum of three installed in his private room, and 
signing themselves cheques on the State exchequer, 
he locked them in adroitly, and kept them in 
durance until the evening, when, the rebellion 
being quelled, he let them go their ways. The 
professional insurgent party did not forgive Picard 
for having so cleverly marred their game. Al- 
though on the morrow of the insurrection he was 
the first to move that there should be an amnesty, 
he was marked out for visitation ; and when the 
Communal war broke out, it was with some diffi- 
culty that he escaped from the revolutionary com- 
panies who had been sent to surround his official 
residence and apprehend him. He was then 
Home Minister, and remained so till the close of the 
civil war, when he resigned, contrary to the wish 
of M. Thiers, who likes him and esteems him at his 
just value. But between the Right, who regarded 
him as too Liberal, and the extreme Left, who 
reproached him for the vigorous measures he was 
obliged to take during the Commune, his part was 
a difficult one. After the next general election 
he will return to the Chamber with an Assembly 



M. ERNEST PICARD. 159 

doubtlessly very differently composed to this one. 
The dominant element will be moderate Eepub- 
lican, and then Ernest Picard will be once more 
selected for power as the best representative of 
that class who wish for a Eepublic without excesses 
one way or the other. Meanwhile he is learning 
experience in the practical working of a free 
Government from a country which is Eepublican 
in all but the name. 



GENEEAL EAIDHERBE. 

TF M. Gambetta were President, Louis-Leon-Csesar 
General Faidherbe would be his War Minister, 
and the French army would be managed by a smile- 
less general of the Cassius type, lean and thoughtful. 
There are Chanzyists and Faidherbeists, the former 
perhaps predominating over the latter ; but one has 
only to look at the dark, spectacled face of the hero 
of Bapaume, Pont-Noyelle, and St. Quentin, to guess 
that he would intellectually outweigh two such 
men as his rival. Chanzy has dash, spirit, and all 
the brilliant qualities which, in prosperous cam- 
paigns, carry Frenchmen from victory to victory. 
It would be a very melancholy business for any 
ill-commanded army that came across his path. 
Faidherbe is not only the man for adverse times, 
as he conclusively proved during the late war, but 
if he were entrusted with a well-equipped army at 
the outset of a campaign, there is probably not a 



GENERAL FAIDHERBE. 



living general wlio could make him budge from his 
positions. This further difference exists between 
the two captains who are to be the champions 
of the '' revanche, " — as the hotter-headed French- 
men hope — that Chanzy is in politics a free lance, 
moderate Republican to-day, to-morrow possibly a 
Royalist or an Imperialist, with the baton of field- 
marshal on his scutcheon, and a ducal coronet on 
his brougham. Faidherbe has declared himself a 
Gambettist in terms so plain that it would be dif- 
ficult for him to recant even if he would. This 
accounts for his being viewed by the present Go- 
vernment with a somewhat cool and careful eye. 

Before the war it was thought that the French 
army contained several hundreds of such ofiicers 
as Faidherbe, and that in Time of need they would 
press up to show the world what French military 
education was. Every year, indeed, that much- 
vaunted forcing-house, the Ecole Polytechnique, 
used to turn loose a hundred and fifty young men 
with pale faces, who settled down into engineer 
and artillery commissions, and inspired the public 
with the sincerest confidence. They had been well 
taught, were adepts at trigonometry, and could 

M 



i62 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

capture tlie strongest citadel in Europe for you 
(on paper) after two liours' reflection. But from 
the day when they left school, under the firm im- 
pression that Metz was impregnable and that there 
was no system of tactics like their system, — from 
that day until the hour when they died they never 
made a step forward in their studies, never per- 
fected themselves, never cared to believe that there 
was anything new in science beyond that which 
they had been taught as boys. And how should 
it have been otherwise ? Men will seldom bestir 
themselves unless goaded to it by competition, and 
the officers from the Polytechnic School had no 
competitors. Their career was laid out for them, 
smooth as a privileged road under Government 
patronage and protection. Public works, improve- 
ments in gunnery, inventions, were all taken from 
their hands, and any civilian outsider bold enough 
to devise, improve, or invent was frowned out of 
all official spheres as an intruder. What would 
have been the use of working under such circum- 
stances ? Jt was even occasionally dangerous to 
work, for although Government made a point of 
employing none but Polytechnicians in its engi- 



GENERAL FAIDHERBE. 163 

neering and scientific operations, a due regard was 
always had to hierarchy, and a cajDtain who had 
claimed to know more than a colonel, a lieutenant 
to be more inventive than a captain, and so on, 
might have found it the worse for them. So the 
young and enthusiastic geniuses just fresh from 
their examinations early learned to keep their zeal 
to themselves, and when they had got hold of a 
new idea to button it up in their pockets, until 
they were grey enough and exalted enough to put 
it into practice by force. By this time, however, 
the idea had generally got grey too, and the result 
of all this became apparent when, on collision 
with the Germans, it was discovered that the 
French possessed an admirable scientific corps of 
mediocre gentlemen, all imbued with a profound 
respect for their chiefs, and with notions twenty 
years old. 

That Faidherbe should have been one of the few^ 
and striking exceptions to the average kind of 
ofiicial engineers may be attributed in a measure 
to his having spent the larger part of his career in 
the colonies. He was born at Lille, June 3, 1818, 
and inherited much of the dogged perseverance of 



1 64 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

his fellow-townsmen ; at twenty years of age lie 
liad already distinguished himself as a military 
student. Soon after leaving the School of Ap- 
plication at Metz, in 1842, he was sent to Oran, 
thence to Guadaloupe, then back again to Algeria, 
and in 1852, having attained captain's rank after 
ten years of the most brilliant services, to Senegal 
as sub-director of the engineering force. Two years 
later he was promoted to his majority, and ap- 
pointed Governor of Senegal, a post he retained, 
with but a few months' break, until 1865, it being 
unanimously allowed that no better colonial gover- 
nor (according to French ideas) had ever been seen, 
and that Faidherbe would undoubtedly carve his 
way to something high in his profession, not un- 
likely the Governor-Generalship of Algeria. It is 
to be noted that the Algerian campaigning Faid- 
herbe had gone through in the training which acts 
prejudicially on ordinary French officers, those 
easy victories over revolted Arabs, the indolent 
life led between the raids, the laxity of discipline 
rendered necessary by the guerilla nature of the 
warfare, and, above all, the habit of moving about 
in only very small bodies of troops, tend to pro- 



GENERAL FAIDHERBE. 165 

duce tliat type of officer which finds its lowest 
embodiment in the absinthe-drinking swash-buck- 
lers of the Boulevards, its highest in such leaders 
as MacMahon and Bourbaki, who are almost in- 
vincible when commanding 10,000 men, and seem 
well-nigh helpless when they have to manage 
100,000. It needed a man of Faidherbe's essen- 
tially cold temperament to withstand the enervat- 
ing influence of Algeria's cheap glories and semi- 
Asiatic customs. The officers who were his com- 
rades describe him as having been always a quiet, 
studious, sober man, fond of leaving the dinner-table 
for geographical researches ; and not particularly 
good-tempered, though generous and ready to oblige. 
Whilst others smoked and lolled, he read; and one of 
his favourite subjects of meditation was the aggran- 
dizement of France as a colonial power. A French 
Clive in this respect, he would have had his coun- 
try become mistress of the whole Mediterranean 
coast of Africa and Egypt, and hold England in 
check by keeping the keys of the Suez Canal and 
the Red Sea. He attached little importance to 
European frontiers. The possession of Belgium or 
the Ehenish Provinces seemed to him a trifle as 



1 66 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

compared with the gigantic influence which France 
might acquire by devoting to African conquests a 
few of those troops she kept so needlessly on foot 
to try and frighten Bismarck or to found an im- 
possible empire in Mexico. There are at the Navy 
Office despatches of his to this effect as remarkable 
as any which Colonel Stoffel wrote from Berlin ; 
and it cannot be denied that if the Second Empire 
had followed the policy which Faidherbe sketched, 
but contrived to do so without adopting that part 
of it which concerns Egypt and conflict with Eng- 
land, it would have been well, not only for France, 
but for the cause of civilization throughout the 
world. Faidherbe' s despatches, however, under- 
went the fate usual to such things. They fell into 
the hands of sniggering clerks, who docketed and 
stowed them by ; and now they lie on dusty 
shelves, to be consulted by mice or by some pri- 
vileged visitor, who, in search of materials for 
Faidherbe' s biography, turns over their patiently- 
Avritten leaves with pity for so much good thought 
and good ink wasted. In 1865 Faidherbe was 
recalled, by his own wish, from Senegal. He had 
subjugated one King of Cayor, annexed a hundred 



GENERAL FAIDHERBE. 167 

square leagues of territory, and reduced to reason 
a most disagreeable prophet called Omer-el-Hadji, 
wlio had been making himself unpleasant to the 
French during a series of years. But the climate, 
or more truly, perhaps, discouragement at finding 
his ambitious schemes for colonization and con- 
quest unnoticed by the Home Government, had 
tired him out, and he gladly accepted the command 
of the subdivision of Bone, his promotion as 
General of Brigade bearing date 1863. He failed 
in an endeavour which he made to obtain active 
employment at the first outbreak of the war ; and 
the next thing heard of Faidherbe was when he 
took the command of the Northern Army during 
the invasion and the proconsulate of Gambetta. 
Within a month afterwards he offered battle to 
the Germans at Pont-Noyelles, fought for two 
days successively with great obstinacy, and saved 
Havre. A great deal has been said of the 
Loire Army, the Eastern Army, and even of 
the Yosges Army, which little deserves to be 
talked about, but up to this moment — in France 
at least — the Army which Faidherbe so ably 
commanded has not yet received its due share 



1 68 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

of praise. The Prussians, more perspicuous 
tlian their foes, know what Faidherbe is worth, 
and class him first among living French generals. 
Prompt at organizing, implacable as a discipli- 
narian, never rash, but, when circumstances need 
it, taking no more account of soldiers' lives than 
of dried leaves, he held his men in hand as no 
other coromander then did, and inflicted losses on 
Manteuffel and Goeben which those generals and 
their lieutenants will not forget. The French 
claim Bapaume as a victory, and St. Quentin 
as half a one. There may be two opinions on 
this point, but certainly the admirable strategy 
of Faidherbe in both battles served to show 
what a display he might have made had he been 
fighting on equal terms. Any notice of Faidherbe 
would be incomplete which treated of him only as 
a soldier, without considering the part he may 
soon play as a politician. At the armistice 
elections on the 8th of February, 1871, he was 
returned to the Assembly by the electors of 
Lille ; but, soon after the peace, he tendered his 
resignation with some noise, and when re-elected, 
on the 2nd of July, for three Departments, he 



GENERAL FAIDHERBE. 169 

again resigned, after taking his seat as deputy for 
the Nord, contending that the Assembly was 
exceeding its prerogative in prolonging its session 
after the treaty was concluded. The Government 
then sent him off on a scientific mission to study 
the Libyan monuments and inscriptions of Upper 
Egypt. Simultaneously he dedicated his book 
on the war to Gambetta, and proclaimed himself 
a Radical. The suddenness of this conversion 
on the part of the ex-colonial governor evoked 
some comment, and the Bonapartists raked up a 
letter, not many years old, in which Faidherbe, 
thanking Prince Napoleon for a personal service, 
vowed his loyal attachment to the Imperial dynasty. 
A man may vow his attachment to a horse, how- 
ever, and yet think differently when the brute 
turns out a bolter and throws him ; so Faidherbe, 
or any other man, has only to mention Sedan as 
the best of all excuses for any abrupt repudiation 
of Caesarism. But though a conscientious Repub- 
lican to-day, Faidherbe might turn out a very 
dangerous ruler of a Republic, and this is what one 
may fear of him. As a War Minister, acting under 
a civilian President of a firm stamp, he might do 



170 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

good ; if lie aspired to the Presidency, and the 
nation were to favour his views, there would be 
mischief. The temptations in the path of a mili- 
tary ruler are too numerous in such a sword-wor- 
shipping country as France ; and keen, clever, 
ambitious soldiers like Faidherbe are not the men 
to be impervious to them. For the Republic's 
sake one must hope that until free institutions are 
fairly rooted to the French soil, not only Faid- 
herbe, but all other generals, will be resolutely 
excluded from the chief executive oflQce. 



BISHOP DUPAIN^LOUP. 

A PRELATE, with the ascetic features of an 
anchorite, the manners of an eighteenth 
century marquis, the piercing eye of a soldier, and 
the combative eloquence of a crusading monk, 
Monseigneur Dupanloup — the priest who received 
Talleyrand's death-bed confession — stands in point 
of talent at the head of the French episcopacy ; 
and in his diocese of Orleans he is not only bishop, 
but king. It was thought last year that M. Thiers 
would raise him to the archbishopric of Paris ; but 
M. Thiers probably mused as to what would be 
the temperature of the capital when the hottest 
ecclesiastic in France got commencing hostilities 
with the Republican municipality about educa- 
tional or other delicate matters, and he preferred 
selecting Monseigneur Guibert of Tours, who is 
not a godlier man, but a quieter. There must 
have been many not among the devout only whom 



172 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

tMs clioice disappointed, for Monseigneur Dupan- 
loup, an academician, a deputy, the most remark- 
able Frencli preaclier since Bossuet, and a contro- 
versialist of world-wide reputation, would have 
made a right imposing primate, of whom Parisians 
might have been proud ; and every time he de- 
livered a sermon in Notre Dame there would have 
flocked crowds to hear him such as even Father 
Ravignan and Father Hyacinthe never attracted. 
But each of these sermons would assuredly have 
operated as an explosion, casting up matters for 
dispute and bitterness over all the quarters of 
Paris, Monseigneur Dupanloup being a prelate who 
has never consented, and would never consent at 
any price, to put a curb upon his tongue. Once 
enthroned in the capital, it is certain he would 
have waged upon Belleville, Montmartre, and the 
favourite newspapers of those localities, a war with- 
out truce or pity. As vacancies occurred in the 
parish churches he would have filled them up 
with ardent priests of the proselytising sort. The 
spiritual domination which weighed so lightly on 
the faithful of Paris during the mundane rule of 
Quehm and Sibour, and under the bourgeois-Hke 



BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 



tolerance of Affre, Morlot, and Darboy, would have 
made itself implacably felt in all that regarded 
infidel literature, under which head would have 
been banished from every metropolitan home lay- 
ing a claim to religiousness the books of Littre 
(dictionary included), About, and Taine, and all 
journals not tending directly to orthodoxy and 
edification. It would have been a glad time for 
the Monde, Union, and other kindred prints ; the 
trade in sacred images, wax tapers, and probably 
also the fish trade, would have received a welcome 
stimulus ; and there would soon have arisen peti- 
tions to the Legislature covered by thousands of 
signatures, and praying for a revival of the Corpus 
Christi processions, abolished in Paris since 1832. 
At election periods, Monseigneur, who has already 
shown at Orleans what a determined bishop can 
do with a well-drilled and obedient clergy at his 
orders, would have converted every one of his 
vicars, curates, and chaplains into electoral agents ; 
and the struggles of the Imperial era between 
irreconcilables and official candidates would have 
been remembered as child's play beside the con- 
tests that would have supervened between lists 



174 ^^N OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

wholly Radical and others wliolly Ultramontane. 
For where prelates like Monseigneur . Dupanloup 
reign, neutral tints fade away. Paris has never 
yet enjoyed a bishop who marched all his clergy 
about like a battalion, and commanded them to 
use the pulpit, the school, and the confessional, as 
instruments for achieving such and such a pur- 
pose. There are even Parisians who might deny 
that such a thing was possible in their city, and 
these may be congratulated upon not having been 
allowed to witness the experiment. Under Mon- 
seigneur Dupanloup such Parisians as are Catholic 
at all would almost all have became rabidly so. 
As for the others, plunging more furiously than 
ever into free-thought, they would have torn his 
lordship's pastoral letters off the church doors, 
raged exasperatedly against him in their clubs, 
cafds, and journals, and if he had been caught in 
an insurrectionary moment by the rougher spirits 
among the party, he would have had no quarter 
shown him. In the last-named contingency, 
Monseigneur Dupanloup would have been the man 
to court martyrdom rather than flee it. Fronting 
his executioners with prelatial contempt, he would 



BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 175 

have repeated as calmly in his last moment as 
every morning at mass, " Judica me, Deus, et dis- 
cerne caiisam meam de gente non sancta." But 
the powerful Bishop of Orleans is not a prelate of 
the Wolsoy or Kichelieu type, nor is he Mazarin. 
He is Dupanloup ; that is, a priest who will leave 
his individual mark as one of the most perfect 
embodiments of clerical ambition allied to private 
sanctity which this century has seen. It is cus- 
tomary to write of all bishops that they lead 
saintly lives ; in this instance the saying Avould be 
no more than strict truth. Frugal as a hermit, an 
abstainer from wine, sleeping on a bed like a 
monk's, and rising at four, summer and winter, 
Monseigneur Dupanloup supports an existence 
which would seem penal servitude to many a so- 
called working man. Read all that Victor Hugo 
says of Bishop Myriel in his " Miserables," and 
you will get a notion of Monseigneur Dupanloup' s 
charity, which is so munificent as to have left him 
occasionally in very straitened circumstances. 
Recall everything that has been stated of Fenelon's 
exquisite sweetness of voice and urbanity of de- 
meanour, and you will have no exaggerated con- 



i;6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

ception of what Monseigneur Dupanloup is in liis 
conversations with strangers. But this is the 
Dupanloup of private life. See him sweep up to 
his throne in the Cathedral of Orleans, with his 
head erect, his body clothed in lace and jewelled 
vestments, and a resplendent procession of thurifers 
and priests chanting before and behind him, and 
you will understand why so many have stigmatised 
him as a proud prelate of the old school, who 
arrayed himself in violet cashmere and cambric, 
and would only eat, like Monseigneur de Nar- 
bonne, of spendthrift memory, off gold plate. 
Nothing is too rich or majestic, according to 
Bishop Dupanloup, for the ceremonies of the 
Church, nor for his own adornment in taking part 
in them. He holds that the Church should speak 
to the eye and the ear as well as the mind ; that 
she should be supreme in the State ; that nothing 
should be done in education or government but 
through her or by her ; and he is quite consistent 
with himself when, humble and unpretending at 
home, he shows himself surrounded with all the 
pomp he can command when officiating as a 
bishop. There is something, however, in Mon- 



BISHOP DUPANLOUP. ill 

seigneur Dupanloup's tone of voice, in his style of 
writing, in his conversation, and even in his look 
when most exalted by the splendours of Church 
pageantry, which first puzzles, and then strikes 
one as slightly dwarfing the dignity of the man. 
Reflect a little, and you will perceive that Mon- 
seigneur Dupanloup's life, which has been devoted 
in a large measure to school teaching, has set upon 
him the ineffaceable seal of the pedagogue. Born 
in 1802, of very lowly parents, in Savoy, Mon- 
seigneur Dupanloup was brought up at the ex- 
pense of an uncle of his, who was a priest ; and it 
was to the habits learned from this good man that 
he was indebted for his extremely rapid rise. Soon 
after his ordination, the Duchess of Angouleme, 
hearing of the Abbe Dupanloup's skill as a cate- 
chist, came to watch him instruct the children in 
the parish church of the Assumption, and she 
was so much pleased with his gentleness and 
his eloquence, that she caused him to be appointed 
confessor to the little Duke of Bordeaux (now 
Count of Chambord). Sl\ortly afterwards the 
Abbe Dupanloup became catechist to the Orleans 
Princes, and then chaplain to the Duchess of 

N 



178 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Berry. After tlie Revolution of 1830 lie founded 
tlie Academie de St. Hyacinthe, an institute where 
young men of all classes, but principally workmen, 
came to hear religious lectures, and in 1834 he 
was offered, but declined, the head mastership of 
the Paris Seminary. He accepted, however, the 
post of chief professor {jprefet des etudes), and his 
teaching was so lucid, patient, and successful, that 
in 1837 Archbishop Quelen insisted upon his 
undertaking the head mastership, and at the same 
time appointed him Vicar-General of the diocese. 
As most people are aware, one of M. Dupanloup's 
favourite pupils at the seminary was Ernest Renan, 
who was then being trained to the priesthood, and 
whom the Bishop has never ceased since to call 
his " erring but beloved sheep." On the death 
of Monseigneur de Quelen, M. Dupanloup be- 
stirred himself most actively to prevent the 
appointment of the King's nominee, Monseigneur 
Affre, whom he thought too lukewarm ; and, 
failing in his endeavours, resigned his Vicar- 
Generalship. Monseigneur Affre taught him on 
this occasion a generous lesson in forgiveness by 
creating the office of Honorary Vicar-General for 



BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 



liim, and by entrusting liim witli a confidential 
and important mission to the Papal Court. Mean- 
while, M. Dupanloup, who, by his Lenten sermons 
at St. Koch and his Advent lectures at Notre 
Dame, had acquired the reputation of being the 
most erudite and impassioned preacher in Paris, 
was appointed Professor of Sacred Eloquence at 
the Sorbonne. He delivered but half-a-dozen 
lectures ; for on his sixth appearance, having 
trampled on the doctrines and memory of Voltaire 
before an audience composed for the greater part of 
Latin Quarter students, he excited such a terrific 
uproar that a breach of the peace was appre- 
hended, and he could never again obtain a hear- 
ing. In 1849, under the Second Republic, and 
Count de Falloux being Minister of Public Instruc- 
tion and "Worship, M. Dupanloup at length ob- 
tained the crowning reward of his career, and was 
collated to the see he has filled ever since. If 
Monseigneur Dupanloup had been personally am- 
bitious, his promotion to an Archbishopric and to 
the Cardinalate would have followed as matters of 
course. Napoleon III. would have been delighted 
to count so distinguished a prelate among his parti- 



i8o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

sans, and Monseigneur Dupanloup might easily have 
adopted the plan of some of his astute episcopal 
brethren, who, giving themselves out for staunch 
Imperialists, became Archbishops, Cardinals, and 
Senators, and only turned round on the Empire 
when it had nothing further to bestow on them. 
But the Bishop of Orleans was too honest for 
trickery of this sort. Finding that Napoleon III. 
did not intend to govern on the ultramontane 
principles, he declared himself his foe without 
delay ; and the pamphlets he wrote against the 
Emperor's policy (notably that reply to an anony- 
mous pamphlet of the Emperor's own, "Le Pape 
et le Congres, 1859") were so scathing, that 
Monseigneur got identified in many peoples' minds 
with the Liberal party. Needless to say that on 
no point was Monseigneur a Liberal ; in fact, 
politics proper were with him quite a secondary 
consideration. He had served the Eestoration and 
the July Monarchy ; and he would have been 
quite willing to uphold the Empire, or even a 
Republic which would have let itself be guided by 
the Church. His Aveapons of attack were the pen 
and the pulpit, but he wielded a yet more dangerous 



BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 



one in the schools of his diocese, and this brings 
one back to the point that both in speech and 
style Monseigneur Dupanloup is essentially a peda- 
gogue. He showed it in his assaults on M. About 
(1860), in his public reprimands of M. Veuillot 
for excess of zeal, in his pastoral letter (1869), 
which gave a lesson to the Pope, in the fearless 
rebuke which he administered to the Germans 
when imprisoned by them in his episcopal palace 
(1870), and in his recent lecture to the Academy, 
apropos of M, Littrd's election. He has shown it 
again in his epistles to Dr. Manning and the 
Archbishop of Malines, in the counter project 
which he presented against M. Simon's education 
law, and in the somewhat patronising support 
he has extended, and is still extending, to M. 
Thiers, whom he regards as a good substitute for 
Gambetta, but nothing more ; and he will show it 
so long as he lives, and can see his lessons repeated 
and propounded by the whole of that doctrinaire 
party of mixed Orleanists and Constitutional Le- 
gitimists who boast that they are his disciples. 
When the roll of France's ecclesiastical worthies 
comes to be called for the last time, Richelieu will 



1 82 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

step to the front witli an axe, Bossuet with a 
sword, Monseigneur Dupanloup with a ferule. 

The little village of St. Felix, hidden away in 
the Alpine forests near Chambery, is the birth- 
place of this illustrious soldier of the Church mili- 
tant. Seventy years since, under the First Empire, 
that part of Savoy was annexed to France as the 
Department of Mont Blanc ; but it was not till 
1838 that M. Dupanloup obtained his letters of 
naturalisation as a French subject. It may please 
scrupulous ritualists to be informed that he was 
baptised on the day of his birth, though it was the 
3rd of January, and received, with the holy water, 
the three Christian names of Felix- Antoine-Phili- 
bert. His mother was a pious woman, who 
brought him up carefully, at the cost of much 
pinching and self-sacrifice. When her brother had 
taught him as much as he could well learn at 
home, he was sent, at eight years old, to Paris, 
and placed at an ecclesiastical school in the Rue 
du Regard, under the direction of the Abbd 
Tesseyre, Having speedily carried off all the 
prizes to be won there, he was transferred to the 
Seminary of St. Nicholas du Chardonnel, and 



BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 183 

tlience, at eighteen, to the College of St. Sulpice, 
where he made a very pleasant and valuable ac- 
quaintance. 

It had happened (1820) that the young Prin- 
cess de Eohan, while admiring herself in the 
looking-glass, when dressed for a ball, had in- 
cautiously approached too near the fire and was 
burnt to death. Her husband, inconsolable for 
her loss, and unable to bear the desolation of his 
home, had sought refuge in the priesthood, and 
became Cardinal Archbishop of Besan9on. Every 
year during the vacation he invited a select few of 
the students of St. Sulpice to visit him at his 
Castle of La Eoche Guyon, and young Dupanloup 
was received with especial favour. The Cardinal 
was deeply imbued with the love of letters ; he 
knew how to make the driest researches of science 
attractive ; and it was from him that his guest 
learned that exquisite courtesy of speech and 
manner which distinguished the French nobility 
half a century ago. Under his guidance the young 
man became an accomplished gentleman and a 
skilful instructor. His teaching at the Paris 
Seminary was so successful that Pope Gregory XVI. 



1 84 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

wrote to him tliat lie was " the apostle of youth." 
He had a peculiar dislike for still waters, and 
thought that boys who hare not a little devil in 
them are commonly hypocrites. This opinion was 
subsequently borne out by one Yerger, whose 
conduct was so exemplary that Dupanloup said 
uneasily, " That boy frightens me." He after- 
wards assassinated the Archbishop of Paris. 

But though cheerful in his morality, M. Dupan- 
loup was always as austere as an anchorite towards 
himself, and while Yicar of St. Roche some rich 
penitents subscribed to furnish his room, which 
was uncomfortable enough to excite their com- 
miseration. When the upholsterer came with 
his goods, and showed his receipted bill, the 
Vicar smiled and answered, "A few sticks are 
sufficient for me. I beg, therefore,, that you will 
sell these fine things, and pay the money to the 
clergyman of your parish. I shall always be too 
well lodged while the poor are hungry." Indeed, 
his charities were so large, that he once gave his 
pastoral staff in pledge to a beggar, having nothing 
else; and it had to be bought back again for 
him. 



BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 185 

Every week lie invites the workmen of Orleans 
to his house, where they pass the evening in 
playing dominoes, chess, or draughts ; but no 
cards are allowed. On these occasions he gives 
moderate refreshment and homely advice, not 
unmixed with shrewdness, to anybody who asks 
for it, and they generally go away pleased with 
their visit, though some of them complain of the 
episcopal tea, which, according to the notions of 
French country people, should oiily be offered to 
the sick. 

As soon as he is up the Bishop has several 
secretaries hard at work upon his correspondence, 
and employs others in pamphleteering. His con- 
ception of an idea is lively, and his dictation rapid; 
but he returns again and again to the first draft 
of a book, and corrects every line minutely. Pub- 
lishers and printers are driven to despair when 
they find that he wants as many as twenty proofs 
of a single sheet ; and probably nothing but the 
prodigious sale of his writings when thus laboriously 
polished would reconcile them to having anything 
to do with him. From long before dawn, often till 
deep into the night, he toils unceasingly ; and when 



1 86 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

exliaustion overtakes Mm at last, he seizes a stout 
stick for support, and sets off for a walk by tlie 
banks of the Loire. If his mental fatigue resists 
this rough treatment, he takes a journey to Switzer- 
land, and seeks health in his native air, wandering 
about on foot among the Alps, where his reputa- 
tion has gone before him — fortunately ; for in one 
of these pedestrian tours he was benighted in a 
storm, and could not get shelter at a curate's 
house till he had assured the worthy man that he 
was " the bishop of the newspapers." 

He was asked, some time since, if he thought 
that the conversion of Talleyrand was sincere. He 
replied, " Yes, certainly. A man often dies im- 
penitent, but he never tries to dupe his Maker." 
Then he told how the old diplomatist had resisted 
the attempts of all the clergy in Paris, till he 
found a very simple way to that callous heart. A 
niece of the prince was about to take her first 
communion, and he caused her to be led in her 
white frock to the bed where he lay dying. The 
child knelt down, and her tears rained fast upon 
the withered hand he stretched out to her. A 
terrible sigh of anguish and remorse burst from 



BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 187 

liim. " Go, my child," lie said ; " go and pray for 
me." He was an altered man after that. " He 
confessed, and received absolution very humbly," 
asserts Monseigneur Dupanloup. 



M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. 

nnHE marriage of a travelling ineclianic and a 
peasant girl produced the most famous writer 
of tlie Parisian press. It came about in this wise. 
In a little village of the Gatinais, towards the 
close of the First Empire, one Francois Veuillot, a 
native of Burgundy, who was wandering about in 
search of work, saw a pretty face at a cottage 
window, and stopped to look at it. The window 
was overgrown with honeysuckle and eglantine ; a 
voice, like the carol of a bird, came singing 
through it. The young woman to whom these 
good things belonged was honest and hard working. 
Though she had a high temper, she had also youth 
and health, with strong common sense. After a 
short courtship, she and Fran.9ois Yeuillot were 
married. Neither of them had any money, so 
that the match was in every respect well assorted. 
Their son Louis, the journalist, was born at 



M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. 189 



Boynes, in tlie Department of the Loiret, on the 
11th of October, 1813. They had then several 
other children, and having been robbed of their 
earnings by a close-fisted employer, the father of 
the family was glad to get the offer of a place at 
a wine merchant's vaults, in Bercy, near Paris, 
where wages were better and more safe. 

Such is the account which M. Louis Veuillot 
gives of his birth and parentage. When some 
allowance has been made for putting prosaic 
facts in glowing words, it may be read with 
implicit trust, for the writer is by no means 
given to hiding away the truth about himself or 
others. 

The humourist who described somebody as " an 
angry boil on the face of civilization " had in 
view a gentleman possessing many of the charac- 
teristics of M. Louis Veuillot, that most Catholic 
journalist, who damns ninety per cent, of huma- 
nity every morning in the choicest French, and 
with the heartiest fervour, from the columns of 
the JJnivers. Taking Monseigneur Dupanloup as 
the Orbilius of the Church in France, then is M. 
Louis Veuillot the Beadle of it. Indeed, such is 



190 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

the efficient title he has himself claimed ; for, 
having been satirized by M. Emile Augier, in his 
comedy Le Fits de Gihoyer, he retorted upon the 
Yoltairean grandson of Pigault-Lebrun : — " Our 
modern Aristophanes talks of me as plying the 
cudgel before the Ark. He is quite right. I 
have always aspired to fill in the Church the 
office of the Beadle, who puts chattering raga- 
muffins to silence, and kicks out dogs who would 
interrupt Divine service." So much amenity 
wdthin so small a space would suffice by itself 
as a portrait of M. Yeuillot. To touch off the 
picture one has only to add that the original is 
sixty, though he carries these years as if there 
were but forty of them ; that he has a mouth and 
eyes which would do very well without alteration 
for a mask of Sarcasm ; and that the general 
aspect of his shrewd, wrinkled, pitted, and 
aggressive features would entitle those who dis- 
like the idea of a Beadle to call M. Veuillot the 
French John Wilkes, If M. Yeuillot has Wilkes's 
face, wit, and combativeness, however, it is fair to 
mention that he has also the British polemic's 
excellent heart in private. An artist having 



M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. 191 

called on him to ask liis sanction for a carica- 
ture to be published in a cornic paper (the laws 
of the Second Empire rendered such sanction 
necessary), was so much struck by the great 
literary Beadle's cordial manners, and by the 
absence of all clerical pedantry in him, that he 
went out vowing he would smash his pencils 
rather than ridicule such a man. There are 
occasions, too, when, writing of a dead or a 
fallen adversary, M. Yeuillot is humble, just, and 
generous ; some recent articles of his on the death 
of M. Gu^roult are a proof of this. It is, perhaps, 
a pity, though, that M. Veuillot should wait until 
his antagonists are under ground before being so 
tender to them. 

During a long time the Parisian public were 
persuaded that M. Veuillot was a humbug, and 
the fault lay in the startling suddenness of his 
conversion, which rivalled that of the apostle on 
the road to Damascus, though it unfortunately 
took place in a less reverent age. The son of 
a cooper, who, finding no work in his own vil- 
lage, emigrated to Paris, and opened a public- 
house there, Louis Veuillot' s early boyhood was 



tgz MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

passed in pothouse society. He rinsed the glasses, 
furbished the copper pitchers, had sous thrown 
him ; and nothing whatever then presaged that 
he would one day be the great lay champion of 
Catholic orthodoxy, and the favourite writer of 
the Court of Eome. At thirteen, having picked 
up at the Ecole Mutuelle (Ragged School it would 
be called in England) just knowledge enough to 
read and write, he was hired as copyist by a 
solicitor, who happened to be brother of M. 
Casimir Delavigne, the dramatist. This circum- 
stance brought a number of literary men to the 
office — amongst others, Scribe, Dumas, Hinard, and 
Auguste Barbier. The solicitor's pupils, getting 
play orders from those gentlemen, occasionally 
gratified young Yeuillot with one ; but they were 
chiefly liberal in lending him novels, and what 
novels may be guessed from Yeuillot's own con- 
fession. He says that the most moral works he 
read at that time were those of Paul de Kock. 
Tbere was in M. Fortune Delavigne' s office, how- 
ever, one OUivier Fulgence, a steady young clerk, 
who noticed the boy's ravenous passion for read- 
ing, and one day surprised him writing an essay. 



M. LOUIS VEUILLOl. 193 

He read the essay, learned that it was Veuillot's 
custom to compose one every day " for practice," 
and from that time lent him the works of good 
authors, revised his essays for him, and took him 
in hand like an elder brother. One must bestow 
a word of respectful homage on those often obscure 
men who in this bustling age of ours thus play the 
part of the good Samaritan. Whether their well- 
meant efforts succeed or fail, assuredly they will 
have their reward. At nineteen Louis Yeuillot 
had, thanks to his own industry and his friend's 
encouragements, so far educated himself that he 
was not only a very ready and trenchant writer, 
but a much more scholarly one than the majority 
of those young journalists who come fresh from 
doing nothing at school. His friend Fulgence 
assured him that literature was his vocation, and 
procured him employment on the staff of the 
semi-official Echo de la Seine- Jnferieure, which 
M. Hebert, afterwards Minister of Justice, had 
started in opposition to the Republican Journal 
de Rouen. Veuillot's prxDvince was dramatic 
criticism ; but he soon obtained promotion to 
leader-writing, and, the editorship of the paper 
o 



194 ^^^^ OP ^^P THIRD REPUBLIC. 

having become vacant, lie found himself influential 
enough to induce the proprietor to appoint his 
friend and benefactor Fulgence to the post These 
two then conducted the paper alone, and a most 
lively paper it was ; Veuillot's articles resounding 
like the cracks of a carter's whip over the grave 
old Norman city, and drawing down upon the 
writer, in the course of business, two duels — one 
with an unappreciated actor, who whistled a bullet 
through his hat ; the other with a Radical jour- 
nalist, who, being rather a better shot, sent his 
bullet through the side of Veuillot's coat, within 
three inches of his heart. Veuillot's writing was 
what would in England be called personal — that is, 
when he caught hold of a man he made him feel 
it ; but it was just the writing needed in Govern- 
ment prints; and in 1833, the official organ of 
Perigueux being in search of an editor, M. Thiers, 
then Home Minister, and keen-eyed as a hawk for 
discerning talent, recommended the Prefect to en- 
gage " that young fellow who is making such a 
stir at Rouen." Louis Veuillot accordingly went 
to the chief town of the truffle province as editor 
of the Memorial de la Dmxlogne, and the joyous 



M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. 195 

ex-journalist Eomieu being soon after appointed 
Prefect of tlie Department, Pdrigueux became a 
pocket edition of Paris — gay, riotous, wit-gTowing, 
and scandalful. Louis Veuillot, wbo soon got the 
title of Romieu's best cbum, was the life and soul 
of tlie noisy set, wbicli comprised amongst otlier 
members Pierre Magne, since Minister of Finance 
under tlie Empire, and General (afterwards Mar- 
shal) Bugeaud, who loved carousing as much as 
war, and took a fancy to Yeuillot for his dash, his 
pluck, and the eighteenth century vehemence of 
those extraordinary leaders which used to be 
written amid the champagne popping of prefectoral 
suppers, and printed piping hot, to the amaze- 
ment of such inhabitants of Perigueux as were 
sober folk addicted to quiet reading. But Yeuillot 
did not confine himself to prose. He fired at the 
Opposition in verse lampoons, modelled after those 
of Piron, of unholy memory ; and he incurred a 
third duel with a Radical, Avho missed him, but 
whom he declined to shoot (the combatants stood 
at ten paces apart), saying, with doubtful charity, 
" You're not worth a bullet." By the year 1837 
his fame as a journalist had become so well esta- 



196 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

blished, tliat M. Guizot, tlien in the Cabinet, sent 
for him to write leaders in the Gharte, the Minis- 
try's pet organ. Veuillot's principal fellow-contri- 
butors were Kouqueplan, Ed. Thierry, Malitourne, 
Edmond Texier, Forgues, and Ourliac, all skilled 
writers, but he overtopped them every one, and he 
was busy making the Gharte a real power in the 
press when the Cabinet colJapsed, and the Gharte 
with it. Immediately Yeuillot was enlisted as 
editor to a new doctrinaire paper. La Paix ; but 
in a few months he had so alarmed the proprietor, 
that the latter cancelled the treaty which united 
them, and it was at this juncture (Easter, 1838) 
that, feeling the need for a holiday, the spitfire 
journalist went on his memorable pleasure trip to 
Rome with his friend Fulgence. Rome during the 
Holy Week ! More than one infidel has felt 
moved by the gorgeous solemnities of these re- 
ligious feasts ; nevertheless Paris was not quite 
prepared to see Veuillot come back so extremely 
moved as to belabour his old friends right and left. 
He returned a Christian indeed ; but what a Chris- 
tian ! A Christian angry with and ashamed of 
himseK for his former life, and vowing to devote 



M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. 197 

his whole existence thenceforth to the propagation 
of principles he had ignored or slighted — a Chris- 
tian who, not content with crying Mea culpa for 
himself, wished the whole phalanx of his friends 
and foes to join in the chorus with him. Those 
who objected to be dragged back to the paths of 
holiness in this way by the scruff of the neck were 
tabooed out of his acquaintanceship ; and thus it 
arose that these outcasts, forming a close-packed 
and astounded body, proclaimed that Yeuillot was 
a humbug who had some ambitious end in view, 
and would blossom out one morning as neophyte 
in orders striding with giant steps towards a 
bishopric. Never was man more squibbed at 
than the repentant sinner who began to publish 
tracts, religious poems, and controversial pam- 
phlets. His old comrades mistrusted him, and 
the clergy even did not feel quite sure of their 
proselyte, who, although he had certainly knelt at 
the feet of Gregory XVI., and received a second 
confirmation from that Pontiff's own hands, showed 
so little of the meekness which sits well on a 
convert. One need not follow Veuillot's life now 
step by step. He accepted a sinecure at the 



198 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Home Office, wliicli afforded liim a competency 
wliilst starting upon his new literary path ; lie 
accompanied Marshal Bugeaud as Secretary to 
Algeria for a few months, and he wrote on his 
return a clerico-political book, " Les rran9ais en 
Algerie." But he did not come fairly before the 
public again until 1843, when he was en- 
rolled as chief writer on the Univers Religieux, 
just founded under the editorship of M. de 
Coux. This paper flourished until 1861, when 
it was suppressed by Ministerial edict ; it was 
revived in 1867, and it continues its exploits to 
this day, having been since the hour of its birth 
the brazen- voiced organ of all those ultra-Catholics 
w^ho would check the tide of human progress by 
holding up Papal bulls in the way. Yet probably 
is there nowhere such Catholicism as M. Yeuillot's 
Catholicism. It is more Papist than the Pope's ; 
more autocratical than Father Beck's ; more epis- 
copal than that of the entire Episcopal Sanhedrim, 
not excepting that of the terrible Monseigneur 
Pie, Bishop of Poictiers. It is too much even for 
Monseigneur Dupanloup, who, on two occasions 
(1852 andl868X interdicted the Univers to the 



Mi LOUIS VEUILLOT. 199 

priests and faithful of his diocese, and launched 
public letters of rebuke against M. Veuillot, saying : 
" Vous cherchez a jouer aupres du clerg^ Monsieur, 
un role qui devient intolerable." The fact is, 
M. Veuillot's self-appointed role is that of censor, 
supervisor, and canonical exponent to the clergy. 
The priests of France walk in terror of him and 
his argus-eyed newspaper. He exhorts the timid, 
frowns at the weak, holds up the wavering to 
scorn and contumely. Nor do his labours rest 
here, for he finds time to write articles, notes, and 
occasionally books (" Parfum de Eome," 1865; 
"Odeurs de Paris," 1866) on all the minor topics 
of the day, and on all the men, however second- 
rate, who seem to him to be exercising an influ- 
ence contrary to his idea of Catholicism. More- 
over, he writes in a style which, be it admitted in 
all candour, seems to grow every day stronger, 
more picturesque, and finer. The Court of Rome 
cannot afford (so at least it thinks) to do without 
such a servant. Indefatigable as a controversialist, 
above suspicion now as a believer, devoid of any 
personal ambition save that of being accounted the 
most sturdy living demolisher of Liberal ideas, he 



200 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

— a simple scribe — played at tlie last CEcumenical 
Council a part scarcely inferior to Antonelli's. 
He was and is a power ; and he may hold his 
head high when speaking to the proudest Car- 
dinal-Archbishop in France, for on every occasion 
when he has appealed from episcopal censure 
to Vatican justice sentence has been given in his 
favour. 

Now, what shall one say to sum up about Louis 
Veuillot ? Perhaps it is as well to say nothing. 
Liberal principles have little to fear from clerical 
Quixotes who tilt against them in the name of 
doctrines eaten with rust long years ago, and which 
sit on the bearer even as the poor Knight of La 
Mancha's corroded helmet sat upon him. There 
is not a Republican but can afford to smile at the 
diatribes which M. Yeuillot levels every day at 
modern thought in general, and at the French 
Republic in particular ; hoping (as Quixote hoped 
about the windmills) to stop the revolving might 
of the former, and to damage the latter by ren- 
dering it ridiculous. Yes, one can smile both at 
M. Veuillot's doctrines and — not without some 
pity for his misguided genius — at him. One word, 



M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. 



however, wliicli perhaps may reach M. Veuillot's 
ear, and, if so, will be worth his reflection : The 
religion he advocates may be Catholicism, it may 
be Papism, or it may be Yeuillotism, but it is not 
Christianism. 



THE DUG D'AUMALE. 

A RECENT and cruel bereavement led many to 
suppose tbat the Due d'Aumale would retire 
from political life. Tlie expectation was unfounded; 
and as the Duke may exercise a considerable in- 
fluence in any crisis of French policies, he becomes 
a fair subject for impartial notice. The fourth of 
Louis Philippe's sons, the Due dAumale was 
generally accounted, after bis eldest brother's 
death, the most brilliant of the family. He was 
less popular, in the political sense, than the Due 
d' Orleans and the Prince de Joinville ; less of a 
prince than the Due de Nemours ; less thoughtful 
and seriously regarded than the Due de Mont- 
pensier ; but he w&s of a gentle, amiable disposi- 
tion, and generous and brave. The army adored 
him, his countrywomen admired him for his gallant 
looks, and he was highly thought of by M. Cuvil- 
lier-Fleury, his tutor, who prophesied that he 



THE DUC DAUMALE. 203 

would come to great things, and is probably of tlie 
same opinion to this hour. Everybody has read 
of how the Orleans princes were sent to the College 
Henri IV. to receive a public education ; how it 
was enjoined that they should rough it like the 
rest ; how the cost of their breakfast was 
fixed by royal orders at one franc and a half 
a head, that of their dinner at two francs ; 
and how in due course they carried off prizes 
in fair contests without favour. There was some 
exaggeration in the enthusiasm which these cir- 
cumstances excited, and in the deduction which 
the aged Talleyrand sought to draw from them 
when he said, " Ce sont des jeunes gens comme on 
n'en voit guere, et des princes comme on n'en voit 
pas ; " but there is no doubt that, thanks partly 
to their education, but chiefly to the home-training 
of their excellent mother, Queen Marie Amdlie, the 
young princes became men of sense, and were not 
more impressed than seems inevitable in the case 
of princes with their superiority over the rest of 
mankind. It should be added that King Louis 
Philippe's sons were educated at a time when 
instruction was treated as a necessity. By-and-by, 



204 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

when tlie Empire flourished, Frenchmen, judging 
by the example of their rulers, concluded that a 
little good luck and a great deal of unscrupulous- 
ness were the main requisites for success in life ; 
but under the Restoration and the July Monarchy 
the recollections of the great cataclysm of 1793 
were still too fresh for such theories. Men were 
living who, ruined by the revolution, had been 
forced to earn their bread in exile ; Louis Philippe 
himself had been for a time a tutor in Switzerland ; 
and among field-marshals, peers, judges, and 
Cabinet ministers, there was many a man who had 
been born (and must have continued to live) in 
poverty under the old regime, and who stood as 
an alluring illustration of what could be done by 
labour, patience, and personal merit under the 
new. Besides, towards the close of Charles X.'s 
reign and the beginning of Louis Philippe's, that 
great ferment of Liberal ideas, which, after pro- 
ducing in politics the Revolution of July, generated 
in literature the mighty cohort of writers which 
counted Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Alexandre Dumas, 
Balzac, Musset, and Beranger in its ranks — that 
ferment turned even small boys' brains, making 



THE DUC DAUMALE. 205 

them more industrious and ambitious of knowledge 
than their latter-day descendants — so that, in 
point of fact, the Orleans princes, although well 
taught, were only educated up to the level of their 
contemporaries, not above it. They were in no way 
prodigies. Henri-Eugene-Philippe-Louis d' Orleans, 
Due d'Aumale, born at Paris January 16, 1822, had 
attained his eighth year when his father ascended 
the throne, and was just seventeen when he 
entered the army. Of course, his promotion was 
rapid. A captain in the 4th Regiment of the 
Line, after a few months' home service he was 
sent to Algeria, in 1840, as aide-de-camp to his 
brother, the Due d' Orleans, and in less than a year 
returned to France with his lieutenant-colonelcy 
and the cross of the Legion of Honour. He had 
distinguished himself greatly at the raids upon 
Affroun and the Pass of Mauzaia — that is, he had 
fearlessly risked his life many times over ; and on 
one occasion, when shivering under an attack of 
fever, had refused to dismount and be carried to 
an ambulance, saying it would be time enough to 
physic himself when the fighting was over. After 
wintering in Paris to recruit his health, he went 



2o6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

back to Algeria, fought again three months under 
Bugeaud and Baraguay d'Hilliers, and obtained the 
colonelcy of the 1 7th Regiment. Then he brought 
his men over to France, and as official newspapers, 
court hyperbolists, and loyal despatches from head- 
quarters had swelled his achievements to the pro- 
portions of matchless feats, his march through 
France was one triumphal procession. People 
cheered in him the modern rival of Gaston de 
Foix, and a revolutionist, jealous of so much honour 
shown to a soldier of nineteen, fired a pistol at 
him, happily without effect, as he was riding at 
the head of his regiment up theJRue St. Antoine, 
in Paris. Naturally, this attempt served only to 
heighten the public enthusiasm ; and Chauvinists 
thanked Heaven that a young cajDtain was at last 
born them who might some day make things un- 
pleasant for the Duke of Wellington, the foreigner 
who weighed most heavily on the national mind 
just then. 

It must be said in candour to the Due d'Aumale 
that everything conspired about this time to spoil 
him, and that, had he developed into the most 
arrogant and self-satisfied of princes, the fault 



THE DUC D'AUMALE, 207 

would have been none of his. For not only was 
he acclaimed as a hero by the most martial of 
peoples, and dubbed a rising Alexander by old 
generals who had fought at Austerlitz, and whose 
testimony might be held conclusive, but he occu- 
pied an exceptional position even amongst his own 
relatives by reason of the colossal fortune he had 
inherited from the Due de Bourbon. There is no 
need to recall the circumstances under which this 
fortune was bequeathed, nor the popular legends 
that were current on the subject — the less so as 
nothing one could say would apply personally to 
the Due d'Aumale, who was a child when the 
estates devolved upon him. But it was a heavy 
load to bear this great fortune concerning which 
such a multitude of mysterious stories were afloat ; 
and it argues good qualities in the soldier that 
he should have used it in a way to make people 
admit it could scarcely have fallen into better 
hands. He did an immense deal of good at 
Chantilly, the old manor of the Condes ; was 
always ready to promote charities or scientific 
enterprises, and doubled the value of all his gifts 
by his perfect modesty and good grace in bestow- 



2o8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

ing them. But tlie bulk of his liberalities was 
lavished upon the army, and in Louis Philippe's 
scheme of government he became the link between 
the soldiery and the throne, just as the Prince 
de Joinville . was to be the loyaliser of the navy. 
He was sent back to Algeria (1842); served as 
general of brigade ; captured with great cleverness 
and not a little rashness the smalah of Abd-el- 
Kader; was promoted to lieutenant-general's rank ; 
and commanded the successful Biskara expedi- 
tion. On the 25th of November, 1844, he married 
Princess Marie - Caroline - Augusta de Bourbon, 
daughter of Prince Leopold de Salerne ; and in 
1847, being then five-and-twenty years old, was 
appointed Governor-General of Algeria. At this 
period he stood at the pinnacle of his fame as a 
young soldier, and of his popularity as a captain. 
His name had a real weight in the kingdom, and 
there is not a question that, had he and his 
brother Joinville thought fit to defy the Provi- 
sional Government of 1848, after their father's 
unexpected fall, they might have retained posses- 
sion of Algeria for at least a few months, and 
occasioned the Second Republic no little trouble. 



THE DUC D'AUMALE, 



They took tlie more patriotic course of resigning 
tlieir commands to tlie Eepublican authorities and 
embarking at once for England. A few weeks 
later, despite the general feeling of the country, 
which was adverse to this impolitic proceeding, 
the Constituent Assembly included them in the 
sentences of perpetual banishment enacted against 
their family. 

Exile may be supported without any serious 
inconvenience when one has not poverty for a 
travelling companion ; and M. Ferdinand Barrot, 
one of Napoleon's envoys, having ventured to in- 
quire if the Due d'Aumale was quite well, re- 
ceived for answer, " Yes, thanks ; I believe my 
health was not confiscated." So his highness 
hastened to make himself as comfortable as possi- 
ble, and bought a villa of Lord Kilmorey, who had 
a taste for dabbling in eligible house property. It 
might not have suited an Opposition prince to show 
that he had too much ready money, and therefore 
the habitation he selected was by no means osten- 
tatious ; but it had formerly (1813 — 1815) been 
tenanted by Louis Philippe, and in the grounds 
were some trees which had been planted by 
P 



:iio MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

the citizen king. Tlie Duke added picture gal- 
leries and a commodious library to his purchase, 
and made an agreeable home of it. The rest 
of the French royal family who were so obliging 
as to take up their abode in perfidious Albion, 
formed a little colony in the neighbourhood, and 
lived almost within hail of each other. The Due 
d'Aumale, however, was the central figure of the 
group, and rather an unusual figure in the eyes of 
the boatmen and small tradespeople in the vicinity. 
He rose very early in the morning, and might be 
often seen shortly afterAvards, apparently tied to a 
tall horse, pounding the hard road with the mien 
of a centaur. (" II a I'air d'un centaure ; lie a sa 
monture, il broie I'espace," writes a personal friend 
of H.K.H.) His highness had patriotic objections 
to be dressed by an English tailor, and sat very 
erect in his saddle in the full costume of his 
country. His hair was clipped in the French 
military fashion, his moustache was abundant, and 
his beard seemed, to the astonished gaze of a 
cockney peasantry, to grow only out of the middle 
of his moutli. His hat, which had a broader brim 
than is in favour with British equestrians, was 



THE DUC DAUMALE, 



placed altogether on one side of liis liead ; more- 
over, lie had spurs of vast length, carried his whip 
like a carving-knife, and kept a tight hand on his 
curb-rein ; all of which things were as marvels to 
the untravelled Anglo-Saxon. 

Nevertheless, it was a dark day for the Twicken- 
ham ratepayers when the Due d'Aumale went 
back to France. He was neighbourly and charita- 
ble, and visitors came to see him in crowds, which 
made it good for the flymen, whose branch of 
industry flourished exceedingly during this partial 
eclipse of a crown. 

The Due d'Aumale was generally popular in 
England, and played his part with some skill and 
much good-humour. He divided his time almost 
equally between sport and literature, and adopted 
many of our customs. He had a hunting-box at 
Woodnorton, in Worcestershire, and kept a pack 
of hounds. It was thought good form to ride 
with him ; he paid bouncing prices for his mounts 
and dogs, doing the whole thing with a spirit im- 
mortalised by Mr. Leech. No such self-satisfied 
Master of Hounds ever seen in England before or 
since. Then he belonged to ''the dub" which 



212 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

counted Carlyle, Tennyson, and Grote among its 
members. It also numbered some subscribers of less 
reputation and more vanity, wbo were wont to pro- 
claim witb a loud voice their intimacy witli " tbe 
Orleans princes." But one ribald subscriber, who 
felt rather overpowered by this style of conversa- 
tion, dryly remarked that " he had previously heard 
more of Orleans plums than Orleans princes, and 
that, indeed, most of these gentlemen had got large 
estates." Still " the club " was well pleased with 
its distinguished guest, for it must be a morose or 
stupid personage who cannot make friends with a 
full pocket ; and the Duke, not being averse to 
cheerful company with his meals, acquired speedily 
a reputation for hospitality. His circumstances 
were easy, and he spent money freely on the 
amusement which he naturally felt from hearing 
brisk talk, and the latest news brought to him, in 
his own language, while residing abroad. Wlien a 
nobleman has a larger income than may be judi- 
ciously applied to his personal use, he can hardly 
put out the surplus at better interest, or with a 
clearer view of his immediate advantage. A dis- 
position to please oneself by ordinary means need 



THE DUC D'AUilIALE. 213 

not be exalted into "heroism, still less into martyr- 
dom. It sliows merely a sensible practice of sharing 
good things with people one likes to see, and 
whose attendance cannot be secured on any other 
terms. Neither should it be a matter of surprise 
to the philosophic mind, that a villa where enter- 
tainment was to be had for nothing, which was 
delightfully situated on the banks of the Thames, 
at a convenient distance from town, and easily 
accessible by rail or omnibus, should have become 
the meeting-place of such French refugees as were 
inclined to give temporary approval to the tenets 
of constitutional monarchy, expounded by an ex- 
cellent cook. They found at Orleans House every- 
thing which could recall a bright remembrance of 
their people and their fatherland. In one room 
were fair paintings by Watteau, tender canvases 
by Greuze, and airy coloured dreams of Prudhon. 
In another were masterpieces of Ingres, Yernet, 
Meissonnier, Delaroche, Rosa Bonheur, and Dela- 
croix. Even the bitter food which best suits 
discontent was not forgotten. On the walls were 
hung escutcheons bearing a sword suspended in 
the air, with the prudent device, " J'attendrai," 



2 .'4 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

mucli in harmony with the tone of thought habitual 
to the emigrant mind, which is of the cautious 
sort, and careful when most resentful to avoid 
danger. 

The dining-room was of an awkward octagonal 
shape, and tradition averred that it had been made 
so ugly to receive George III. according to his 
Majesty's original ideas of the becoming ; but per- 
haps there was not a room in the kingdom which 
echoed more often to laughter, while capons of 
Normandy, stuffed with Perigord truffles, and 
served on the delicate china of Sevres, were floated 
over palates moistened by the best wines of Bor- 
deaux and Eheims. The Duke would never let 
his guests forget that he was the jolly prince who, 
marching past the famous vineyard of Clos Vougeot 
at the head of his regiment, had called a halt, and 
commanded his troops to present arms to " salute 
the joy of France." His frank and soldierly 
manners, his high spirits, and handsome presence, 
gave an infinite charm to his receptions, and many 
a careworn Gaul, with a sad heart and an empty 
pouch, must have been glad enough of an invita- 
tion to Avarm and cheer himself when nigh ready 



THE DUC D'AUMALE. 215 

to perisli in the wilds of Bloomsbury or Camber- 
well. After dinner the Duke, who was his own 
librarian, busied himself by making an annotated 
catalogue of his books. He had many scarce his- 
torical works, many curious editions of the old 
French poets, and many rare comic songs, among 
his collection. He wrote while conversation was 
going on, unrestrained, and often smoked a pipe of 
" caporal," a species of tobacco largely consumed 
in the French army. It would have been difficult 
to discover a more genial or unaffected host than 
the banished heir of the Prince de Conde. 

From this time until the year 1871 the Due 
d'Aumale and the Prince de Joinville gradually 
assumed in Frenchmen's minds a position some- 
what akin to that of heroes in legendary romance. 
With the Dues de Nemours and de Montpensier 
the public were less concerned, for the latter was 
well married in Spain, and the former being a 
Legitimist and at least outwardly cold and re- 
served, had never been a people's man. But it 
was impossible not to remember with sympathy 
how uniformly genial, French-hearted, and brave 
the two young favourites of Army and Navy had 



2i6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

been ; and when tlie Bonaparte Empire came to 
be definitively established, the thought of their 
exile pricked the consciences of average French- 
men with something like remorse. Sailors talked 
of how the Prince de Joinville had bombarded 
Tangiers and St. Juan d'UUoa, brought back the 
body of Napoleon from St. Helena, and sworn to 
blow up his ship if it were attacked by the Eng- 
lish. Soldiers related how the Due d'Aumale 
used to go about and chat with the men in his 
camp, ask them for tobacco to fill his pipe, and 
question them about their homes, always with a 
view to relieving some want. The bourgeoisie, 
who had ever liked the Orleans family, contrasted 
the domestic virtues of the princes and their 
freedom from all that was fast or in bad taste with 
the raffish tone of the new court. Then, reports 
came from Twickenham and Claremont of the 
esteem in which the princes were held there. Or 
an article would appear in the Revtte des Deux 
Mondes on some military or naval question, and, 
though unsigned, be known as the work of one of 
the exiles, and excite a fortnight's interest. Or 
again, some pamphlet by one of them, or an entire 



THE DUC HAUMALE. 217 

book (" Histoire des Princes de Conde," by the Due 
d'Aumale, 1861), would be seized at the printer's ; 
or it would be whispered among the initiated that 
the Due d'Aumale had paid an incognito visit to 
Paris, had been recognised by the Imperial police, 
and been allowed forty-eight hours to pack up and 
leave ; or again the princes would appear openly 
at Baden, hold levdes there, and receive the 
homage of distinguished Frenchmen who had 
never bowed the neck to despotism. They never 
conspired, they only waited upon events. " They 
do not exert themselves, yet they advance," said 
the Emperor, repeating the uneasy words of Louis 
XVIII. about their father. " This activity without 
movement disquiets me ; but how can one prevent 
men from walking who take no steps ? It is a 
difficult problem, and I would willingly spare 
the solution of it to my successor." In fact, 
though Napoleon III.'s Government could confis- 
cate the Orleans princes' property, prohibit the 
sale of their photographs, and send the printers 
and publishers of their pamphlets to prison, it 
could not stamp these much-respected exiles out 
of the public mind. Popular affection hallowed 



2i8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

them, popular pity magnified tlieir liigli deeds, 
tlieir misfortunes, and their talents, until little by- 
little, as faith in the Empire waned, people got to 
think of the Prince de Joinville and the Due 
d'Aumale as of a Castor-and-Pollux pair of 
brothers, who would be ready to run to France's 
rescue in case of need, and guide her armies or 
lead her fleet to new triumphs, whilst securing 
her social system against the onslaughts of 
anarchy. 

The brothers are back in France now, but 
doubtless they both feel that their prestige is a 
little shaken. The last war has thrown into the 
shade such performances as the bombardment of 
Tangiers or the expedition to Biskara ; and as for 
learned treatises on warfare, the nation has been 
taught by the ever-memorable example of General 
Trochu that good writing does not always imply 
sound strategy. The Duke d'Aumale was elected 
(in 1871) for the Department of the Oise, and 
took his seat in the National Assembly after a 
scuffle with M, Thiers. He has said something 
there about councils of war, about the tri-coloured 
flag, and about himself, in the ordinary royal ducal 



THE DUC D'AUMALE. 



way. He will maintain commercial treaties ; he 
would like to pass the parliamentary session in 
Paris, but is too prudent to vote on important 
occasions. The Prince de Joinville, who sits for 
the Haute Marne, is almost equally discreet, though 
he recently gave one casting vote, and some of 
the Orleans properties have been therefore restored 
by the Republican Government. Frenchmen have 
not ceased to believe that Joinville would command 
a ship well, and d'Aumale lead an ai'my gallantly, 
but their confidence on the subject does not 
exceed cool limits. On the other hand, men who 
reason upon Government at all ask themselves 
whether these two elderly princes are quite as 
essential to the well-governing of France as many 
have thought, and as they themselves still appear 
convinced. What could Joinville or d'Aumale, 
acting as lion and unicorn to the Count of Paris, 
do for France more than France can do for her- 
self at less cost and with less clanger ? In 1849- 
50 there was a powerful party for electing Prince 
de Joinville President of the Republic ; in the 
present year there is another party bent upon 
trying the same experiment with the Due 



220 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

d'Aumale, wlio lias some what supplanted his 
brother in Orleanist predilections. It must be 
hoped, as much for the Duke's own sake as for 
France's, that this burlesque will never be carried 
out. It would lead to a revival of the mongrel 
royalty which collapsed in 1848 ; and that to a 
Communalist Revolution again at an early date. 
Now, the Orleans family are an amiable race of 
princes, but this is a reason why they deserve 
better than to enact the part of monarchical Aunt 
Sallies, set up only to be knocked down again. 
They have a much nobler and wiser part to play, 
if they will only play it — and that is to remain 
citizens. If they want a scope for their ambition, 
let them simply join with all other honest men in 
keeping out of France any disgraceful form of 
political brigandage. That will be good work 
enough for the present. 



M. EMILE DE GIBABDIK. 

TT is something to be accounted tlie leading 
journalist in France, and to be credited with 
originating a new idea every day, even when that 
idea is not often a good one. This is the position 
of M. Emile de Girardin, who despite his seventy 
years, is still a power in the State, and feels it so 
well that he has not ceased to hope in his heart of 
hearts that he may yet be a Minister, and perhaps 
— for who knows ? — have the guiding of France's 
destinies for a brief space all to himself M. 
Ingres plumed himself upon being, not a great 
painter, but a great fiddler. M. Lamartine was 
persuaded that he could play the flute ; Rossini 
was prouder of his talent at mixing salads than of 
Guillaume Tell or II Barbiere. Similarly M. de 
Girardin, who is a journalist, a crack journalist, 
and nothing but a journalist, is filled v/ith the 
conviction that nature cut him out for a states- 



222 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

man, and had he been born in America he would 
have preceded the late Mr. Greeley as candidate for 
the Presidency, though, unlike Mr, Greeley, he would 
have retained the editorship of his paper during 
the electoral campaign, and trumpeted his own 
merits himself to the public every morning, and 
probably every afternoon, for he is not the man 
to count the cost of a special edition more or less. 
One must have known and talked often with 
Girardin to realise the amazing jumble of qualities 
and defects which it takes to make a founder of a 
successful French paper. Quick-eyed and pert of 
tongue, blessed with a confidence in himself which 
graces bombast, and is amusing in its naiveness, 
he talks crisply as if he had many of the cares 
of State on his mind, and had no time to waste 
in words ; but if you happen to be well versed in 
a subject of which he knows nothing, he will 
kindly give you hints on that subject, and set you 
right on the points where he conceives you to be 
wrong. His articles are short, tight strings of 
little sentences, round and hard as bullets. He 
writes : — 

" Pitt was a great man. 



M. EMILE DE G IRAK DIN. 223 

Wliy ? 

Because lie tolerated liberty and maintained 
order. 

Order is liberty. 

Liberty is order. 

"Without order, no liberty ; 

"Without liberty, no order. 

Order and liberty are sisters who su23port and 
strengthen each other. 

The}^ have a common crown, which is glory. 

Pitt gave glory to his country. 

Pitt was a greater man than Monsieur X ." 

Then the signature, and after it more articles of 
the same value, dragging in other great personages 
of history, from Timour the Tartar to Brigham 
Young (spelt Brihgam). You think M, de Girar- 
din knows all about Timour and Prophet Young. 
So he does. He has read up half a page of dic- 
tionary about each of them before sitting down to 
>\T.'ite, and that is enough. They are not French- 
men, and cannot be expected to occupy his at- 
tention longer than the time requisite for taking 
their peculiarities as examples or warnings to his 
own countrymen. 



224 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

All ! if it were of France, for Frenclimen, Emile 
de Girardin were writing, it would be a different 
matter ; and from tlie prices of table-frogs per 
hundred in tbe fens of Sologne down to the 
antecedents of tbe youngest literary tyro wbo has 
begun to make bis mark in tbe Paris press, be 
would give you information more exbaustive and 
sbrewd tban ever bad been beard, besides wind- 
ing up witb a propbecy ; for, like Dickens's Mr. 
Bunsby, be keeps an eye fixed upon tbe vanishing 
point of tbe horizon, and detects there things un- 
seen to other men. France is as well known to 
him as his own writing-desk. Frenchmen as the 
spots of ink thereon. He believes in the " mis- 
sion" of France — an enlightening, diverting, and 
thrashing mission : that is, France should hold up 
the torch of instruction and amusement to other 
nations, and thrash them occasionally for their 
good and her own. Thus she should have thrashed 
Prussia, but did not. Why ? "Was it a visitation ? 
No, a lesson. Next time she will thrash Prussia 
more completely ; and meanwhile by all means let 
M. Thiers keep his place until somebody else gets 
into it. What are M. Girardin's politics ? As above 



M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN. 



said, lie broaclies an idea a day. On Monday his 
idea is that M. Guizot is the man for France ; on 
Tuesday his idea is that he was mistaken yester- 
day ; on Wednesday he is ready to give the Re- 
pubhc a fair trial ; on Thursday he concludes that 
the only true government for France is the 
Empire ; . Friday, having been imprisoned by the 
Empire, he withdraws his allegiance from it in a 
solemn leading article ; Saturday finds him agitat- 
ing with purse and pen for the plebiscite, and 
being couched on the list of promotions to the 
Senate, on Sunday, amid the blaze of the Com- 
mune, he remains valiantly in Paris conducting a 
new paper. La France Federate, and advocates the 
parcelling of his country into fifteen States, on the 
model of those of America, with himself probably 
as President of the lot. Little consistency between 
one idea and the other, but in the deductions from 
each separate idea logic of the most pyrotechnic 
and bewildering kind. He is all enthusiasm — a 
man in whose hands new brooms are sure to sweep 
clean to-day, and equally, sure to be worthless to- 
morrow. With the brazen horn of Joshua he calls 
upon his countrymen to worship this fresh man or 
Q 



226 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 



that otlier — Louis Napoleon, OUivier, Gambetta — 
to give their souls, lives, and fortunes to him, to 
let him take care of them, and to sink their mils 
in his. Next day he grows cool ; following day, 
sulky. On the fourth day he has turned his horn 
round the wrong way, and is blowing to all nations 
and languages — " Down with the man ! I've made 
an error. He's not what I took him for." Cavaignac 
imprisoned Girardin. Louis Napoleon, upon whom 
he turned as soon as ever he had, by means of the 
Presse, secured his election, exiled him, then by- 
and-by had him fined. But Girardin is not the 
man to be damped by what he would pompously 
term martyrdom. He always comes back to the 
charge with new reserves of energy, prepared to 
champion new causes and give a kick to old ones. 
He has no friends, for there is not a Frenchman of 
mark with whom he has not first chummed and 
then quarrelled, then been reconciled to half-a- 
dozen times ; but he ^has a very host of acquaint- 
ances, admirers, and, worst of all to say, disciples. 
Like Napoleon the Great, whom in face he used to 
resemble, and whose abruptness, gestures, and atti- 
tudes he used largely to copy (barring his famous 



M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN. 227 

eyeglass play, however, wliicli is all liis own) — like 
Napoleon, he patronises and believes in young 
men. Any literary aspirant is free to call upon 
him without introduction, and solicit employment 
on his paper. If he looks a likely man, he is 
enlisted on the spot, and remains one of the staff 
until the day when he writes his second dull 
article, on which occasion he is dismissed without 
ceremony. Emile de Girardin has never edited a 
dull paper. 

M. de Girardin is famous for five things : his 
birth, his first marriage, his duel with Armand 
Carrel, his introduction of cheap newspapers into 
France, and the peremptory note he wrote to Louis 
Philippe on the 24th February, 1848, bidding that 
astonished monarch abdicate on the spot, and 
entrust the Regency to the Duchess of Orleans. 
Emile de Girardin was born in Switzerland (possi- 
bly on the 22nd of June, 1806 ; but according to 
another account in 1802, day not mentioned), and 
first went by the name of Delamothe. His parents 
were not married, and young Emile was some time 
discovering who his father was ; but as soon as he 
had learned, he adopted his name without asking 



228 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

his leave, and stoutly maintained his right to do 
so, all laws and customs notwithstanding. With- 
in a week after he had taken this bold step he was 
appointed by some mysterious influence to a place 
in the household of Louis XVIII., under M. de 
Genones, who held the sounding title of " Secretary 
of the King's Commandments." But he was 
abruptly awakened from any dreams he may have 
had of official distinction, by the dismissal of his 
chief. When turned out of his appointment under 
Government, he obtained a very humble employ- 
ment from M. Geoffroy, a stockbroker, and 
lost all his savings in some absurd speculation. 
After that he wanted to enlist in a troop of 
hussars, but was refused by the surgeon of the 
regiment as too delicate for military service. By- 
and-by (1847), his father, General de Girardin, 
formally adopted him. Emile de Girardin' s mar- 
riage was one of the events of forty years ago, his 
wife being the gifted and beautiful Delphine Gay, 
one of the sweetest writers among the pleiad of 
1830 — the best of wives, the most amiable and 
graceful of gentlewomen. The wedding did not 
take place without some difficulty, for it was 



M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN. 229 

necessary to produce a register of tlie husband's 
birtli, and there was no such document forthcom- 
ing. Six" witnesses, however, declared that they 
had known M. de Girardin from 1822 to 1823, 
and that he then appeared about eighteen years 
old. This evidence was held to be suffcient for 
the purpose in 'view. The third great event 
of Girardin' s life, his killing of Armand Carrel in 
a duel, seemed likely at one time to cost him his 
own life, for the Liberal journalists of Paris met in 
conclave and vowed to avenge the death of their 
young and glorious champion by challenging Girar- 
din one after the other until he fell. Girardin had 
sworn, however, after the death of Carrel (it was 
his fourth duel), that he would never fight again, 
and a Court of Honour, to which he appealed, laid 
it down that he was quite justified in this course. 
Of Girardin' s journalistic speculations, and of the 
enormous fortunes he made by starting with just a 
hundred francs capital, and a like sum in a part- 
ner's purse, first the VoUut and then the Presse, 
it is almost needless to speak, seeing that the 
Presse soon acquired a world-wide celebrity, and 
kept mankind tolerably well acquainted during five- 



230 AlEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

and-twenty years (1836-1856 — 1861-66) with its 
editor's doings, public and private, his quarrels 
witli other newspaper promoters, and tne actions 
lie brought against brother penmen, who attacked 
him mercilessly as a charlatan, and assaulted him 
publicly, in hopes of inducing him to fight and be 
killed. When Girardin finally threw up his con- 
nection with the Presse, he started the Liherte, and 
again by selling his paper at less than the cost 
price until he had gathered a formidable radius of 
subscribers round him (when he raised it), drew 
down on himself the maledictions of competitors 
and the gratitude of the general public. Emile de 
Girardin is still occult editor of the Liherte now, 
but, being intimate with most of the statesmen at 
the head of the Government, he spends a great 
deal of his time giving them advice at his dinner- 
table or at theirs, and writes less than he used to do. 
Perhaps this is not a misfortune to be greatly de- 
plored, for Emile de Girardin, whilst familiarizing his 
countrjnuen with cheap papers, indoctrinated them 
at the same time with cheap and flashy thoughts 
— tinsel without, nothing within. He is one of 
the men who has most contributed to misguide 



M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN. 



the drift of the public mind, to instil into modern 
Frenchmen a blind tendency to hero-worship and 
to destroy their self-reliance. That he should now 
and then have advocated generous and liberal ideas, 
does not entitle him to rank as a Liberal. The 
Liberal party prefer soldiers who, if less brilliant, 
are steadier, less liable to be swayed by contrary 
winds, and, above all, less egotistical. 

The curtest summary of the events of M. de 
Girardin's busy life would fill volumes ; and there 
are so many different accounts of most of them, 
that it is difficult to select that which is most 
worthy of belief. He has written several books — 
" Emile ; Fragments sans Suite d'une Histoire sans 
Fin," " Bon Sens et Bonne Foi," " Journal d'un 
Journaliste au secret," " Questions administratives 
et financieres," " Les Cinquante deux," among 
others. The best known of his works is " Emile " 
(Paris, 1828), wherein he is said to have told his 
own story. It is not a good novel, being chiefly 
filled with incoherent reflections on himself, his 
lodgings, his sweethearts, and the moon. It is, 
therefore, only candid to add, that M. de Girardin 
did not rush into print till he was driven to do 



232 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

SO by wliat appeared utter ruin ; but from that 
moment liis fortunes brightened, and lie began to 
make sucli a noise in the world that three pub- 
lishers disputed the copyright of his first work. 
M. Pothieu was the successful competitor in this 
unusual struggle ; and the book was so well 
reviewed, that it had the rare effect of restoring 
him to office. It obtained for him the sinecure 
appointment of Inspector of the Fine Arts from 
M. de Martignac ; and he employed his leisure in 
starting his first venture in journalism, which con- 
sisted in reprinting the best articles in other 
papers, without going through the formality of 
paying his contributors. He sent out his adver- 
tisements under the Government seal, and for- 
warded one of them by post to every mayor and to 
every curate in France, taking their names and 
addresses from an almanack. He thus got 10,000 
subscribers in a month, and was also shot in the 
shoulder by an angry author. The latter event 
disgusted him of editorship for the moment, but 
he preserved his interest in the practical enterprise 
he had launched, and soon created another journal, 
called La Mode, under the patronage of the 



M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN. 



Ducliess de Berri, wlio was offering that sly sort of 
opposition to tlie court of Charles X. which kings 
have generally to expect from members of their 
own family. The Duchess, however, abandoned 
the concern in a fright, and M. de Girardin is said 
to have gained three thousand new subscribers by 
the loss of her royal highness's influence. The 
subsequent speculations of M. de Girardin in 
cheap journalism have been innumerable. They 
seemed very wonderful in France twenty years 
ago, but to a generation which has seen halfpenny 
papers established as an institution all over the 
world they have lost their novelty. 

At present, M. de Girardin is giving a qualified 
and uncertain support to the Kepublic. He ac- 
cepted a seat on the Commission of Inquiry into 
the organization and administration of the city of 
Paris ; and was one of the syndics of the press 
who were deputed to plead before the legislative 
commission for the abolition of the stamp tax on 
newspapers. An unpublished decree, counter- 
signed by M. Eraile Ollivier, dated on the 27th of 
July, 1870, and found among the papers at the 
Tuilleries after the revolution of the 4 th of Sep- 



234 iJ/fi'.V OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

tember, raised M. de Girardin to tlie dignity of 
senator, " in consideration of the services lie had 
(also) rendered to the Imperial Government as a 
journalist." Indeed, he was perhaps the principal 
writer who excited that bellicose spirit among 
Frenchmen which brought about the Franco-Ger- 
man war ; and one of his ideas was to confide the 
conduct of it to M. Haussmann. M. de Girardin' s 
latest speculation in journalism has been the pur- 
chase of the official French newspaper ; the latest 
event of his life, known to the public, is his legal 
separation from his second wife, the Countess de 
Tieffenbach. 



FATHER HYACINTHE. 

rpHREE years ago, wlien Father Hyacintlie wrote 
to the General of the CarmeHtes, and with- 
drew from an Order which he said had become 
"a prison of the soul" to him, many good people 
who were more sanguine than perspicuous foretold 
that this monk would be a French Luther, and 
head a grand schism which should divide France 
into Galileans and Infalliblists. What might have 
happened had the Empire lasted in peace there is 
no surmising ; but it was already easy to perceive, 
in 1869, that France was hurrying towards a 
crisis which would confine her attention during 
many years to topics wholly political, and under 
such circumstances Father Hyacinthe might be 
said to have been born at the wrong moment ; 
all he could aspire to play Avas the part, not of 
Luther, but of Savonarola. Now he has married, 
and the news of this event has caused a violent 



236 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

commotion tlirougliout tlie country, making him 
for the moment the most prominent man in 
France. The excitement will abate, however, 
and resolve itself into a nine days' wonder. 
Vilified by many, lukewarmly defended by a 
few, blamed by the majority even among the 
non-clerical public, he shares to-day the fate of 
all men who have ever attempted to war single- 
handed against abuses too strong for them. To- 
morrow he will be half forgotten. The public 
mind is unfortunately not in a mood for discuss- 
ing the questions he has raised, and though his 
doctrines and his courageous example will fall like 
good seed and fructify, he himself will in all like- 
lihood not live to see the harvest. This is to be 
deplored, for Charles Loyson is both a righteous 
and a great man. It is impossible to look into 
those honest eyes of his, or to hear the sound of a 
voice which has the ring of Christian earnestness 
in it, without feeling that here is a preacher who 
might be trusted to guide men anywhere. His 
is not the Christianity of conclaves or episcopal 
courts ; it is the teaching drawn from the fountain- 
head — from Christ's own doctrine, taught for the 



FATHER HYACINTHE. 237 

comfort and enlightenment of men, not, as tlie 
Papal See contends, for tlie enslavement of tlieir 
minds under the yoke of priestly bondage. 
Charles Loyson was born at Orleans in the sum- 
mer of 1827. The precise date of his birthday is 
not recorded. He was educated at the Academy 
of Pau, where his father was rector ; and became 
a schoolboy poet. He wrote verses of rare excel- 
lence—imaginative, sweet, and idyllic ; and he is 
said to have aspired to a literary career, though 
on the refusal of a comedy of his at the Paris 
Gymnase he supposed modestly that he had 
overrated his abilities, and turned his thoughts 
towards the Church. In 1845, therefore, he was 
entered at the seminary of St. Sulpice ; and after 
passing four years in theological study, he was 
ordained a priest. There was a great deal in 
the quiet life of the priest to tempt the mind 
of the poet. Loyson thought of one of those 
retired French vicarages by the sea, or in some 
wild district of the Yosges or Pyrenees, where a 
pastor can study nature, teach his flock, and die 
unknown to Fame, yet remembered by the 
humble parishioners who love him. His talents 



238 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

debarred him from sucli a peaceful life. Imme- 
diately after his ordination he was sent to teach 
philosophy at the Seminary of Avignon, then 
theology in that of Nantes, and afterwards 
appointed Vicar of St. Sulpice, It was in 
these pursuits that the sense of his vocation 
awoke. The theology he propounded seemed to 
him at best but cumbrous vanity. Why so much 
dogma to swathe that simple commandment, 
" Love one another," which is the fullest com- 
mentary on and epitome of all Christian precepts ? 
Loyson felt called to reveal the truth untram- 
melled, and to denounce the abuses which made 
of the Catholic religion, not the Church of Christ, - 
but the institution of an intolerant sect weighing 
by oppressive laws on the free development of 
human thought. He gave up his parish, and tried 
to join the Order of St. Dominic ; but, after a few 
months' probation, was dismissed by the master of 
the novices in consequence of some misunder- 
standing. He then (1860) entered the Carmelite 
convent at Lyons, " not without illusions/' as he 
somewhat touchingly said in his farewell letter 
to his General, and after a two years' noviciate 



FATHER HYACINTHE. zi^ 

was admitted to take those vows which, he ceased 
to consider binding when it was sought to con- 
strue them into a surrender of moral indepen- 
dence. His pulpit career was begun at Lyons in 
1862, and was continued at Bordeaux in 1863, 
at Perigueux in 1864, and at Paris in 1865-6-7. 
In the first three of these cities he had grown in 
reputation with every sermon, and by the time he 
reached Paris he was as famous as his Jesuit rival, 
Father Felix. Less polished in his eloquence than 
Dupanloup, less fiery than Ravignan, and less 
ecstatic than Lacordaire, Father Hyacinthe's was 
the voice that sinks deep into the heart and melts. 
No one who ever attended one of those Advent 
lectures at Notre Dame in 1867 will forget them. 
The text of the series was " Famil}^ Ethics," and 
the Friar's audience comprised as many of rich and 
poor, frivolous and philosophical, as would fill the 
vaist cathedral. Humble workmen and powerful 
Ministers of State came there, bishops and mun- 
dane ladies, and the simple-mannered, rather burly 
monk preached to this Second Empire throng as 
they had never been spoken to before. He did not, 
like Father Felix, give them abstruse controversy 



240 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

daslied with rose-water religion ; lie tried to rally 
a moral circulation in hearts benumbed with the 
effects of sensuality, or palsied with mere idle fears 
of the devil. He was pitiless in exposing the 
shams of every-day life. He denounced hypocrisy,' 
told his hearers that their consciences were truer 
guides to them than any priest, and combated that 
pernicious system which would in social matters 
set up the authority of the confessor against that 
of the husband and father, and substitute in edu- 
cational matters the mandate of the Church for the 
judgment of the State or the private convictions of 
individuals. No wonder the Ultramontanists took 
alarm. Father Hyacinthe's teaching was tanta- 
mount to a declaration that the clergy were simple 
administrators of sacraments — " servants of the 
Church," to use the old term, instead of rulers 
over it. M. Louis Veuillot in the Univera at- 
tacked these doctrines and their propounder with 
fury, and it was well for Father Hyacinthe that 
his private life bore looking into, even with a 
thousand-power magnifying glass, for few men 
were ever overhauled as he was by the most 
trenchant of journalists and the most unscrupulous 



FATHER HYACINTHE. 241 

of newspapers. As it was, M. Veuillot's impeach.- 
ment caused the stout-hearted friar to be sum- 
moned to Rome. He appeared as an accused man, 
defended himself in the Pope's presence, and went 
away almost absolved ; the truth being that, though 
the Papal Court detested his opinions, they saw in 
him a man too strong and dangerous to be quar- 
relled with. A few weeks after his return to France, 
however (1869), Father Hyacinthe, speaking at the 
International Congress of Peace, put the Jewish, 
Protestant, and Catholic faiths on a footing of 
equality, as " the three great religions of civilised 
peoples ; " and hereupon sacerdotal patience gave 
way. Archbishop Darboy, his friend and patron, 
wrote nervously to tell him he was going too far. 
The General of his Order, a by no means intolerant 
man, who admired, and had therefore encouraged, 
him in every way, let himself be overawed by the 
Jesuit faction, and intimated to the monk that he 
must either speak according to canon law or hold 
his peace. It was then Father Hyacinthe wrote 
his famous letter of September 20, 1869, which, 
coming on the eve of the Q^]cumenical Council, and 
indignantly assailing as it did the doctrine of Papal 



2j2 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Infallibility, exploded like a sliell in tlie Catliolic 
ranks. Monseigneur. Dupanloup sent one of his 
chaplains to Father Hyacinthe, and, in great epis- 
copal flurry, entreated him to spare the Church 
the sight of a grievous scandal. Finding his 
chaplain had arrived too late to stop the pub- 
lication of the letter, he wrote and begged the 
Father to recant, to throw himself at the Pope's 
feet and solicit forgiveness. Father Hyacinthe 
answered, that he felt no need of pardon ; and, 
braving the major excommunication launched 
against him, he sailed for the United States, in 
order to withdraw himself for a few weeks from 
the ultra-orthodox annoyances that would have 
beset him in his own country. His recent marriage, 
which had been foreseen for some time by those 
personally acquainted with him, is but the logical 
sequence of the theories contained in his letter, and 
re-advocated in all his speeches and conversations 
on American soil. 

Now, Father Hyacinthe best knows by what 
means the cause he has at heart should be served ; 
but he must certainly be aware that there is not a 
country in Christendom where he would have so 



FATHER HYACINTHS. 243 

little cliance of success as in France, In Spain a 
man of liis parts might liave effected a schism ; in 
Italy lie would have rallied a strong, or at least 
demonstrative, party round him ; in Germany he 
would have proved a valuable ally to Prince Bis- 
marck in that statesman's warfare against Jesuitism. 
But in France he could expect little sympathy 
and no support ; neither has he obtained any. 
For religious purposes the French may be roughly 
divided into two parties : the bigots, and those 
who do not believe anything — the latter being 
much the larger section, though subdivided into the 
rampant school, who are outspokenly infidel ; and 
the deferential set, who profess to believe every- 
thing for peace and propriety's sake. None of 
these categories desire Church reform. The bigots 
ban the idea as blasphemy ; the free-thinkers dis- 
miss it as not worth their attention ; the poco- 
curante majority would much rather not hear 
ecclesiastical matters discussed at all. To these 
last the church is a necessary ornament ; they 
send their wives and children to it ; they them- 
selves are influenced neither politically nor socially 
by edicts ; and they deprecate almost savagely 



244 ^^^N OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

iny controversy tending to revive topics wLicli 
hey regard as settled long ago. Moreover — and 
Father Hyacintlie seems rather to have overlooked 
this fact — the Eoman Catholic Church, as at pre- 
sent managed, is much more of a political than of 
a religious body. It represents antagonism to all 
that men call progress. It is the enemy of science, 
free discussion, and human reason. By the instru- 
mentality of the confessional and by the enforced 
celibacy of priests (which is but the propping 
stone to the confessional), it finds it can exercise 
more prestige over weak minds than it could by 
liberal concessions. And so long as this is the 
case it will not abate a jot of its pretensions. No 
doubt the time will come when, thanks to the 
spread of education, men will take the sensible 
view of faith, and look upon it as a thing of the 
heart, not of outward observance. In that day 
there will be a majority of men who, rejecting the 
comfortless conclusions of atheism, will ask for a 
religion which will be in ritual simple, in dogmas 
tolerant, in charity universal. Then the Papal 
See, in order not to be left high and dry by the 
flood of human enlightenment which has already 



FATHER HYACINTHE. 245 

begun to roll aliead of it, may fling itself into tlie 
stream, throw off its encumbering superstitions, and 
once more take the lead it held when it fought 
the victorious fight against Paganism, and earned 
that proud title of Catholic which it has since 
ceased to merit. But many years and generations 
must elapse before that time ; and meanwhile 
those who, like Charles Loyson, endeavour to im- 
prove the Church without subverting it, must be 
prepared for harder treatment than the Church's 
worst enemies. Happily the efforts of Church 
Reformers are no longer sealed in blood ; now-a- 
days they need only be watered with tears. Let 
it, at all events, be a comfort to Father Hyacinthe 
to know that any tears wrung from him by the 
cruel aspersions which are being poured upon his 
head at this moment by all those of his country- 
men whom he had been training to love, will not 
be thrown away ; no affliction entailed by the 
conscientious advocacy of a worthy cause ever is. 



MM. EECKMANN-CHATEIA:tT. 

npHE education of all peoples is more or less con- 
ducted by novelists ; and during twenty years 
of tlie present century (1830-50) tlie French 
seemed to draw all their inspirations — political, 
religious, and social — from works of fiction. These 
were the palmy days when the feuilletonniste was 
the most important contributor to every daily 
paper. Eugene Sue wrote his " Mysteres de Paris," 
and was accounted so earnest a reformer that, on 
the mere strength of this novel, he was elected to 
the Constituent Assembly in 1848. Victor Hugo 
wrote " Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamn^," which 
very nearly eifected the abolition of capital punish- 
ment, and "Notre Dame de Paris," which set men 
so crazy on the subject of mediaeval architecture 
that M. Rambuteau, Prefect of the Seine under 
Louis Philij)pe, could not demolish a house fifty 
years old without making all Paris shriek as at a 



MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. 247 

sacrilege, Lamartine produced " Les Girondins," 
which is credited with having hastened the Revo- 
lution of 1848, and, at all events, secured for its 
author the chief seat in the Provisional Govern- 
ment ; and Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, and Frede- 
rick Souli^ laboured each in his special walk, and 
with wonderful success, to develop that public 
taste for fast living and rowdy glory which paved 
the way for the Empire. Novel-writing is now 
on the decline in France, and this for a commer- 
cial reason. A novel being generally published in 
a one-volume form and at three francs, it requires 
a book of real merit to ensure a sale large enough 
to cover expenses ; and publishers are conse- 
quently unable to offer any but exceptionally 
popular authors remunerative prices. M. Edmond 
About is an instance of a very successful novelist, 
who finds that it pays better to write half a dozen 
newspaper articles a week at a fixed salary of 
60,000 francs per annum than to sell books which 
have cost him six months' labour at prices ranging 
from £200 to £500. Other ex-novelists, who, 
like MM. About, Jules Claretie, and Xavier Eyma, 
are not enlisted by newspaper proprietors, take, 



248 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

like M. Dumas, to dramatic writing, whicli also 
pays ; and in proportion as journalism gains ex- 
tension, and play-going becomes more universal, 
novel-writing must continue to diminish. Never- 
theless, there are still authors who persist in 
creating fiction, and it speaks hopefully for the 
improved tone of thought among the French work- 
ing classes, that no books should at the present 
moment be so popular as Erckmann-Chatrian's. 
It is true that these gentlemen tower above their 
brother novelists by much more than a head and 
shoulders. MM. Emile Gaboriau, Eugene Chavette, 
and Louis Noir, who are reckoned the leading 
feuilletonnistes of the day, are at best but 
tenth-rate writers, and have never put as 
much good sense in ten volumes as Erckmann- 
Chatrian put in a page. But the success of Erck- 
mann-Chatrian is greater than can be accounted 
for by mere superiority in talent and workmanship. 
It extends over all the towns of France, and is 
beginning to invade the hamlets. Go into what 
workshop or village you will in company with the 
colporteur, who strolls by on his rounds two or 
three times in a month, watch the man unstrap his 



MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. 249 

pack, and then see what are the books that will be 
demanded of hmi. For every volume of Dumas, 
Paul de Kock, or Ponson du Terrail — for every 
one of those flmisy periodicals which eke out mur- 
der by the page full, and should be stamped out 
like the cattle-plague, a dozen numbers are bought 
of those cheap serials headed "Romans Nationaux." 
And national novelists MM. Erckmann and Chat- 
rian indeed are. WTien you hear a French me- 
chanic talk knowingly of the Great Revolution and 
the causes which led to it, he has not often got 
his information from Thiers, Michelet, or Louis 
Blanc ; he has obtained it from that admirably- 
written " Histoire d'un Paysan ;" and if at Chisel- 
hurst the Emperor Napoleon is truthfully told now 
and then that peasant adherents are fast falling 
away from him, he need look no further for the 
reason than " L' Histoire du Plebiscite." 

M. Emile Erckmann was born at Phalsbourg, in 
the Department of the Meurthe, on the 20th of 
May, 1822. M. Alexandre Chatrian was born at 
the little hamlet of Soldatenthal, near Abresch- 
willer, on the 18th of December, 1826. 

The joint fame of M. Emile Erckmann and M. 



250 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Alexandre Chatrian only began about a dozen 
years ago, with tbe publication of a rather fantastic 
story, " L'lUustre Docteur Matheus." M. Erck- 
mann was then thirty-eight years old, and M. 
Chatrian thirty-four ; and they had been working 
together since 1847 without being able to make a 
hit. M. Erckmann is the son of a bookseller, and 
was destined for the bar. M. Chatrian' s family 
were glassfounders, who, being ruined, were greatly 
pleased at securing for their son a well-paid clerk- 
ship, with prospects of becoming partner in a glass 
foundry of Belgium, and immensely disgusted 
when he threw up this good position to devote 
himself to literature. Literature had, in truth, a 
bad name then in country districts, and especially 
in Alsace, where the friends were both born. It 
was in Alsace that M. Victor Hugo, being invited, 
whilst in the zenith of his reputation, to dine with 
some honest folk of his acquaintance, found him- 
self an object of suspicious attention on the part 
• of the servant. This unliterary domestic set him 
down as a Bohemian, kept an eye on his move- 
ments, and when the time came for pouring out 
the champagne, asked aloud, and with great reluc- 



" MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. 251 

taiice, " Sliall I give any to tlie man of letters ? " 
M. Erckmann, who, like M. Chatrian, could not be 
brouglit to apply liimself to tlie career his friends 
wished, was also the victim of hearty family repro- 
bation ; and it was this that first contributed to 
establish a link between the young men. They 
were introduced to each other by a professor 
of the College of Phalsbourg, where M. Chatrian 
had obtained an ushership pending the time when 
his pen should support him, and at once they 
became friends, and put their brains as well as 
their purses in common. Literary aspirants who 
are discouraged when they do not clear the steep 
which leads to fame at one bound, might draw a 
lesson from the sturdy perseverance shown by the 
two Alsatians under the painful bad luck which 
for a long time beset them. They toiled twelve 
years without success or profit. They wrote short 
tales which were not appreciated, novelettes which 
were rejected or laid upon shelves to be printed 
only many years after, and dramas which were 
either refused, or, as happened once with a too 
patriotic play of theirs called Alsace in 1814, 
banished from the stage by prefectoral edict at the 



252 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

second performance. One of tlie circumstances 
against tlaem was, that tliey began at a time when 
politics left men too little leisure to think of 
literature ; and later, when the total cessation of 
home politics under the Empire brought novels 
into demand again, it was not novels of the kind 
they could write. People wanted the patchouli- 
scented productions of M. Arsene Houssaye, or 
the strongly-spiced lucubrations of MM. Gustave 
Flaubert and Ernest Feydeau. MM. Erckmann 
and Chatrian were too honest, too naively moral, 
for an enslaved generation who wished to forget 
that freedom and public integrity had ever existed. 
After writing themselves down to a state of indi- 
gence bordering on pennilessness, the pair of friends 
were on the point of giving up the struggle. M. 
Chatrian, who had abandoned his ushership, soli- 
cited a railway clerkship at £60 a year, and 
M. Erckmann started for Paris to continue the 
legal studies he had begun just sixteen years 
before. It was then (that is, at the time of the 
Italian campaign) that the public in one of its 
capricious moods took a fancy to their " Docteur 
Matheus," bought three editions of it, and gave 



MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. 253 

tlie authors that "name" which is to the dispirited 
tyro what a horse and gig are to a jaded wayfarer. 
Nobody suspected, however, that the double 
appellative " Erckmann-Chatrian " included two 
writers ; and it may interest some readers to know 
how a couple of men can write in concert, being 
now and then, as was the case with MM. Erckmann 
and Chatrian, many miles apart. M. Chatrian is 
the more imaginative of the two. The first out- 
lines of the plots are generally his, as also the love 
scenes, and all the descriptions of Phalsbourg and 
the country around. M. Erckmann puts in the 
political reflections, furnishes the soldier types, 
and elaborates those plain speeches which fit so 
quaintly, but well, into the mouths of his honest 
peasants, sergeants, watchmakers, and schoolmasters. 
A clever critic remarked that Erckmann-Chatrian' s 
characters are always hungry and eating. The 
blame, if any, must lie on M. Chatrian' s shoulders, 
to whose fancy belong the steaming tureens of 
soup, the dishes of browned sausages and swiier 
kraut, the mounds of floury potatoes bursting 
plethorically through their skins. All that M. 
Erckmann adds to the menu is the black coffee, of 



254 ^^EN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

wliicli lie insists, with some energy, on being a 
connoisseur. Habitually tbe co-autliors meet to 
sketcb out tlieir plots, and talk them over amid 
much tobacco-smoking. Then, when the story 
has taken clear shape in their minds, one or other 
of the pair writes the first chapter, leaving blanks 
for the dialogues or descriptions which are best 
suited to the competency of the other. Every 
chapter thus passes through both writers' hands, 
is revised, recopied, and, as occasion requires, 
either shortened or lengthened in the process. 
When the whole book is written, both authors 
revise it again, and always with a view to curtail- 
ment. Novelists who dash off six volumes of 
diluted fiction in a year, and affect to think nought 
of the feat, would grow pensive at seeing the 
labour bestowed by MM. Erckmann and Chatrian 
on the least of their works, as well as their patient 
research in assuring themselves that their historical 
episodes are correct, and their descriptions of 
existing localities true to nature. But this careful 
industry will have its reward, for the novels of 
MM. Erckmann and Chatrian will live. The signs 
of vitality were discovered in them as soon as the 



MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. 255 

two autliors, nerved by tlieir first success, settled 
down and produced one tale after another, all too 
slowly for the public demand, " The Story of a 
Conscript," " Waterloo," '' The History of the Man 
of the People," and above all, " The History of a 
Peasant," were read with wonder as well as interest. 
This sober, graphic, unsensational writing did not 
read like fiction. It might have been the real 
composition of one' of those simple folk in whose 
mouths the authors generally put their narratives, 
were it not that the vigour of style, the terse, 
manly French, argued a degree of culture unfortu- 
nately not yet attained by the peasants and small 
tradesmen of our day. And here one must allude 
to the patriotic principle MM. Erckmann and 
Chatrian have constantly served, in advocating 
through all the chapters of their books the re- 
claiming of the people from ignorance and super- 
stition. They are not liked by the Catholic clergy, 
and are no great favourites with the routinists of 
the Public Instruction Ministry ,*whose system of 
educating, or rather of not educating, the masses 
they have repeatedly and indignantly denounced. 
But thev are regarded as warm and valuable allies 



256 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

by all the Liberals who are seeking to found the 
Eepublic, by enlightening the nation on the dis- 
graces and miseries which ignorance entails on 
peoples as well as individuals, and their works 
deserve to be read, not in France alone, but in 
every land where the population is bowed down 
under the yoke of antiquated tyrannies and pre- 
judices. As to the Chauvinist tone the two 
authors have adopted in their last work, in which 
they preach the " revanche" against Germany, that 
may be forgiven them. Englishmen must think 
how any British novelist would write if his native 
Kent were in the hands of foreigners — and fo- 
reigners, too, whose praises he had always sung. 



M. HEITEI EOCHEFOET. 

TN despite of tlie line adopted by Henri Roche- 
fort during the Commune, none but Bona- 
partists could help feeling sympathy for him when 
he was condemned to transportation for life. 
People were secretly pleased at the clemency of 
M. Thiers when he permitted him to remain in a 
French prison ; and now that the news of the 
unfortunate journalist's health has been growing 
worse and worse, one may expect that the 
generosity of French nature will suggest even to 
M. Rochefort's enemies that their once bitter 
antagonist has suffered enough. Those who were 
acquainted with M. Rochefort can, indeed, affirm 
that captivity must have been to him a far more 
cruel thing than to ordinary men. That nervous, 
soft-hearted, feminine character was not meant for 
confinement, especially for confinement aggravated 
by remorse. Rochefort has been described as a 
S 



258 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

gamhi, and tlie term fits him well ; but lie is also 
a gentleman. He has no judgment, but he has 
heart, wit, and a sense of delicacy which has been 
at times obscured, but never destroyed. Under 
the Commune he allowed himself to be carried 
away. His popularity and the detestable counsels 
of a very bad set of men, into whose hands he had 
fallen, crazed him ; but those who watched him at 
his trial, and heard his almost inaudible confession 
that on one or two ■ occasions he had gone too far, 
and now regretted it, must have seen that these 
words wore the expression of a remorse much 
greater than the prisoner cared to reveal. The 
fact is, he was almost heartbroken. "When the 
fumes of his intoxication cleared away, and he 
could measure the extent of what he had done, he 
got to talking loud and defiantly, but this was 
hysteric bravado, and his eyes grew haggard. 
After his condemnation, the feeling that M. Thiers, 
whom he had so wantonly maligned, was acting as 
his best friend, and trying to obtain his pardon 
from the Grace Committee, gnawed him at every 
hour of the day. He said a few weeks ago to an 
acquaintance who went to visit him, "Well, is 



M. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 259 

Thiers going to bring us back tbe Orleans 
family ? " and there was a feverishness in his tone 
as if at all costs he must get rid of some of the 
load of obligation that was crushing him. On 
being assured that M. Thiers was doing his best 
to found the Republic, he exclaimed, "Nobody- 
means a tenth of what he says, but I wish I had 
been taken by Gallifet and shot." He is indeed 
a man to be pitied more than blamed, for he 
was made to play a part quite unsuited to him, 

Victor Henri de Rochefort-Lu9ay was born at 
Paris on the 30th of January, 1830, and was 
educated at the college of St. Louis, where he 
obtained distinction for the , excellence of his 
verses. It is a curious fact in literary history, 
that his first published writing was composed for 
the Floral games at Toulouse, and is a hymn in 
honour of the Yirgin Mary. But his circum- 
stances and home were unfavourable to the 
growth of orthodox opinions. 

The son of a Legitimist nobleman, the Marquis 
de Rochefort-Lu9ay (who, under the name of 
Edmond Kochefort, had acquired considerable 
reputation as a playwright), and of a virile-minded 



26o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

motlier, who was a Republican, his boyhood was 
distracted by a jumble of precepts calculated to 
paralyse the judgment of any youth. His father 
taught him to worship the Pope and the Bourbons ; 
his mother counselled him to study the lives of 
great Republicans, and to mould his actions upon 
them. As he had no fortune to expect, both 
parents warned him not to do like his father, and 
write comedies, but to adopt some serious pro- 
fession ; and they suggested that he should 
become a physician or a schoolmaster. Henri 
Rochefort, however, felt no taste for a medical 
career, and still less for the labours of professor- 
ship. He studied medicine for a while, then gave 
Latin lessons ; but he ended by obtaining a clerk- 
ship at the Hotel de Yille, and as the work in this 
post was not heavy, he employed most of his 
business hours in playing cards or in writing, 
first for the " Dictionnaire de la Conversation," 
and then for comic newspapers. Some articles 
of art and dramatic criticism which he con- 
tributed to the Charivari attracted the atten- 
tion of Baron Haussmann. They were funny 
articles, quaint and sarcastic ; but Rochefort, who 



M. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 261 

spent a great deal of his leisure time haunting 
picture sales, showed that he was a connoisseur in 
painting, and the Baron recommended him for a 
sub-inspectorship of Fine Arts. He soon grew 
tired of this post, Avhich, though better paid, was 
less of a sinecure than his clerkship, and in 1861, 
being then thirty-one years old, he abandoned it 
to devote himself wholly to journalism. He had 
already earned a name among the Boulevard wits 
by a one-act comedy or two, and a clever book he 
published in 1 8 6 2 on the trickeries of auctioneering 
(" Petits Mysteres de I'Hotel des Yentes ") classed 
him as a rising man in the light brigade of litera- 
ture. This means that Rochefort was always to 
be seen on the Boulevards from five to six ; that 
he attended the first performances at theatres ; 
criticised the Government whilst sipping absinthe, 
and was welcome to insert his squibs in all papers 
that were not political. The only points that 
distinguished him from other literary men of his 
clique were that he never smoked, and even railed 
with some irony at those who did ; he also dressed 
with more care than was usual with 'petits jour- 
nalistes. Let it here be recalled that a petit 



262 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

journaliste belonged to a category quite distinct 
from tlie journalist proper. There were, until 
1868, wlien tlie old press law was repealed, only 
about a dozen daily papers licensed to discuss 
politics. They paid 60,000 francs caution money 
at starting, and were subjected to a tax of six 
centimes on each copy ; but to found such a paper 
required a special Ministerial authorisation, which 
was not often granted ; and as a consequence the 
contributors to these large journals held their 
heads high, and affected to despise the gentlemen 
who were on the staffs of the non-political sheets, 
which anybody was free to establish. On their 
side the petits journalistes, who kept a sort of 
afternoon club, first at the Cafe des Varietes, and 
by-and-by at the Cafd de Madrid, treated their 
graver compeers as fogies, and Henri Eochefort 
was perhaps the readiest to launch his shafts at 
those of his press colleagues who, like the writers 
on the Dehats, Temps, and Siecle, sought to debate 
the affairs of the country seriously. He should 
have exercised to all time this gay profession into 
which he had so snugly ensconsed himself, for it 
fitted him perfectly. He read capital little lessons 



M. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 263 

to peccant actors ; lashed just on the right spot 
the young debauchees of high hfe who made 
themselves ridiculous ; and had not his match for 
inditing on the Phrynes of the Bois de Boulogne 
one of those stinging articles which would bring 
the victim or her protector down to the publishing 
office with shrieking threats of duel or action at 
law. Then there were his comedies and farces, 
which were most droUy immoral. On the whole, 
he meant no harm, and doubtless here and there 
did good by chastising social abuses. But he was 
not an earnest reformer, nor even a Liberal. He 
was simply a laughing cynic, and the mere fact 
that he should have suddenly towered into the 
position of champion to the Liberal and Republican 
parties speaks to the curious moral plight into 
which France had been brought by the men of 
the Empire. 

The thing began in the usual way. A silly 
Minister, taking alarm at a few bold witticisms, 
sought to gag the small journalist, and so swelled 
him into a half-martyr. Roehefort had been 
writing in the ^oUil and the Evenement When 
the latter pa2)er was suppressed, the Figaro, trans- 



26-4 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

formed from a bi-weekly , into a daily paper, took 
its place, and Eocliefort became leading chroni- 
queur at a salary of eighty pounds a month, at 
wliicb price bis services were purchased, after a 
spirited competition between M. de Villemessant 
and the banker Millaud, proprietor of the 
Soleil. He had just begun then to fly at higher 
game than actors and spendthrifts. He made 
covert allusions to politics, and his editor lived in 
daily dread lest he should overshoot the line and 
entail the suppression of the paper. This even- 
tually happened. Rochefort having commented 
too transparently on some legislative measure, 
M. de Lavalette, the Home Minister, sent for M. de 
Villemessant, and told him that unless Rochefort 
were dismissed the staff, the Figaro should be 
prosecuted for printing unlicensed politics, and sup- 
pressed. M. de Yillemessant being, however, un- 
willing to part with Rochefort, submitted that if 
the Figaro were suffered to become a political 
paper Rochefort should be attached to it only as a 
htei-ary contributor. This compromise was effected, 
and Rochefort, whose value in the market had 
become strangely magnified by this State negotia- 



M. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 265 

tion about himself, was engaged at a salary of 
£1,200 a year to write on all subjects "save those 
relating to this, that, or to anything else." It 
was at this juncture that the Emperor issued his 
manifesto of the 19th January, 1867, stating that 
he was prepared to grant the nation more liberties, 
including that of starting political papers. Eoche- 
fort hereupon applied for a specimen of this last 
liberty ; but it was refused him, on the ground 
that the Legislature (which meant in this instance 
M. Rouher) had not yet ratified his Majesty's 
decision. From this moment Rochefort gave him- 
self out as an intractable oppositionist, and lost no 
occasion of publishing that, as soon as he had a 
paper of his own, he would handle the Empire 
as it had never been handled before. And he 
kept his word ; for when the new press law left 
him free to bring out his Lanterne, the event 
assumed proportions which have now become 
matter of history. The Imperial Government, if it 
had acted wisely, would have let Rochefort alone. 
No doubt his bitter jeers, and fearless denunciation 
of official abuses, were hard to bear ; but, after 
all, the majority in every country will support an 



266 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

established Government sooner tlian risk revolu- 
tion, and, by the end of a few months' time, the 
Lanterne, if allowed to flame away as it listed, 
would have burned itself out. This must have 
happened the more surely, as Rochefort, though 
clever and humorous, was ignorant, and soon lost 
all command over himself. A writer who wants 
to be of use to any liberal cause must fence with 
his pen, not slash with it ; he must, further, ad- 
vocate one object at a time, and wait till he has 
succeeded in the first attempt before going on to 
the next, progress being a thing of degrees, not of 
leaps and bounds. If a writer, taking up the 
cudgels for reform, is good-natured enough and 
weak enough to hearken to all the persons who 
come to him with grievances, and if he makes 
those grievances his, he arrays all society against 
himself, and is a lost man. At the first number 
of the Lanterne, Rochefort had nine-tenths of in- 
telligent France behind him ; after the eleventh, 
when he was driven to fly to Belgium by three 
sentences of imprisonment, aggregating twenty-nine 
months, his only adherents were the extreme 
men. Some of these followed him to Brussels, 



3f. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 267 

lived at liis expense, toadied liim, and ended by 
turning liis head, Tliey persuaded him that he 
was a great man, and a Eadical Republican ; they 
drove him to sneer at Jules Favre as too moderate, 
and to oppose him at the general election of 1869 
as " an incumbrance to the Liberal party." They 
made him so completely their puppet that when 
the poor fellow took his seat in the Corps Legis- 
latif after the elections of November, 1869, he 
was as an Ishmael, having no programme in 
common with his colleagues, no programme of 
his own even — only the ludicrous pledge of being 
able to solve the social question " in five minutes," 
Of Rochefort's short stay in the Chamber, of his 
violent article on the death of Victor Noir, of his 
imprisonment, liberation by the people, and of the 
office he held for a few weeks under the Govern- 
ment of the National Defence, it is needless to 
speak at much length. After his lantern went 
out, he founded two newspapers, the Marseillaise 
and the Mot dOrdre. They had but a turbulent 
and short existence. They made a great noise, but 
effected no good to any cause. During the siege 
of Paris he was made President of the Commission 



268 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

of Barricades, and did his duty so energetically, 
that he was placed on the Republican list, and, at 
the election of the 8th of February, 1871, was 
chosen representative for the Department of the 
Seine, being the sixth out of forty-three candi- 
dates ; and 165,670 votes were recorded in his 
favour. At Bordeaux he sat with the members of 
the Extreme Left, voted against the preliminaries 
of peace, and then abruptly resigned his seat in 
the Assembly. He supported the revolution of 
the 18 th of March with all the strength of his 
paper staff, but refused to take office under the 
Commune, on the plea of ill -health. He is 
accused of having instigated the destruction of 
M. Thiers' s house, and charged with the responsi- 
bility of having encouraged the desperate armed 
resistance encountered by the troops of Versailles 
in their march to Paris. He was arrested at 
Meaux on the 20 th of May, interrogated while 
suffering from brain fever, condemned as guilty 
of nine crimes or derelictions of duty by the third 
Council of War, and sentenced to imprisonment 
in a fortress, M. Victor Hugo made a pressing 
appeal to M. Thiers for a commutation of this 



M. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 269 

pimisliment, but without result. M, Rocliefort 
was first confined at Fort Boyard, and in the 
month of June last (1872) he was transferred to the 
Citadel of St. Martin de Rd. A few days' liberty 
was, however, granted to him in the autumn, in 
order that he might legitimatise his children, and 
marry their mother, who had retired to a convent 
in Paris, and was said to be dying. The cere- 
mony over, he was sent back to jail ; and perhaps 
no more melancholy wedding was ever witnessed. 
M. Rocliefort upon this occasion formally pro- 
fessed his belief in the Roman Catholic faith, and 
denied that he had ever been a heretic at heart. 

Rochefort's instincts were always good, and 
his behaviour invariably weak. When left to 
himself he acted well ; under the bad advice of 
interested wire-pullers he frequently conducted him- 
self like a madman. There is no excusing his 
unparalleled violence during the Commune, except 
by supposing that his hatred of the Empire had 
culminated into a monomania ; and that he re- 
garded every man who did not share his views to 
the full as a conspirator plotting the return of 
that execrated regime. But once again, for these 



270 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

excited terrors and for the deplorable conduct 
which resulted from them, Eochefort's few dis- 
reputable intimates are more to blame than him- 
self. As a general rule it must be laid down that 
the chiefs of an insurrection should be punished, 
and the lowlier rebels, when possible, spared. But 
Kochefort is one of those few insurrectionary- 
leaders who have never led anybody, but have 
always followed the commands of their subordi- 
nates. His crimes are, to have been too feeble, 
too good-hearted, and too vain. Surely, however, 
these offences have been expiated. 



M. EDMOKD ABOUT. 

IIT EDMOND ABOUT, whom tlie Germans 
arrested at Saverne, is tlie most tho- 
roughly French amongst all French novelists, the 
most biting of French pamphleteers, the most un- 
lucky of deserving dramatic authors, the most 
restless of newspaper editors, and in politics the 
most disappointed man in France. In his own 
words, "he has been offered everything, he has 
accepted everything, and he has got nothing." 
Edmond Fran9ois Valentin About was born at 
Dieuze, a little town of Lorraine, on the 14th 
of February, 1828 ; and when sent five-and- 
thirty years ago to a seminary at Pont-a- 
Mousson, in his native Lorraine, he already 
gave promise of being a clever man ; but he was 
emphatically a sad boy, who had imbibed some- 
where a contempt for the sacred writers, and spoke 
of them with such precocious levity that the 



272 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

reverend fathers, his teachers, first tried what 
cuffing on the head would do, and then expelled 
him. Young Edmond's family, however, though 
a poor one, had friends, and these procured the 
boy an exhibition at the Lyc^e Charlemagne in 
Paris. Religious instruction being no part of the 
programme here. About got on very well ; but he 
was not an amiable character out of school hours, 
and fought more than one shin-and-claw battle 
with sensitive comrades' whom his bitter sayings 
and pert demeanour humiliated. At the Concours 
General (general competitive examination of public 
schools), in 1848, About carried off the grand 
prize for the Latin essay (" Prix d'Honneur de 
Philosophic"), Pr^vost-Paradol being that same 
year winner of the French essay prize. These are 
the supreme honours to which French schoolboys 
can aspire, and their value was heightened in this 
instance by the speech which M. Carnot, the 
Republican Minister of Public Instruction, made to 
the pair of young scholars as he handed them their 
laurel crowns and prize books, and told them that 
the Second Republic relied for its support on rising 
generations of men such as they. M. Carnot's 



M. EDMOND ABOUT. 273 

encouragements would appear to liave touched 
Edmond About, for on entering tlie Ecole Normale 
he was a very determined Eepublican indeed, 
though, for that matter, he stood in no contrast to 
his brilliant college friends who were as far from 
dreaming then that a Bonaparte would ever come to 
gag them, as they were from suspecting that some 
of their number would turn courtly advocates of the 
gag. MM. Taine, Weiss, Libert, Prdvost-Paradol, 
and Francisque Sarcey are some of the names 
which figured beside About' s at the Normal 
School. It was a most hopeful pleiad ; patriots 
like M. Carnot might well draw favourable auguries 
from it, and the only wonder is how a generation 
which produced such offshoots should have sub- 
mitted so long and so tamely to be kept under 
foot. On leaving the Ecole Normale, Edmond 
About proceeded to the French School at Athens, 
which was a sort of finishing college for aspiring 
professors, and for awhile he gave himself up 
to archaeological studies. But this was not the 
natural bent of his mind. At five-and-twenty he 
was an accomplished scholar, teeming with wit, 
malice, and scepticism. He had studied Voltaire 
T 



274 ^EN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

as more pious people do tlieir Bible ; lie carried 
volumes of tlie philosopher s works about with 
him, soaked his fancies in them, and had ended 
by so impregnating himself with the Voltairean 
spirit that when he began to write he unconsciously 
did so in a style as bright and firm as his great 
master's own, and with a humour every whit as 
diabolical. "La Grece Contemporaine," which 
was his first regular work, proved an immediate 
success ; but it raised a great clamour both at 
Athens and among the Greeks of Paris, who taxed 
M. About with having repaid the hospitalities ex- 
tended to him by satires of the most ungrateful 
and exaggerated description. To this it may be 
answered that people who receive wits into their 
houses must be prepared for the consequences. 
M. About had been allowed the free run of 
Athenian drawing-rooms ; he had seen a great 
deal, been amused at much, and, once home, had 
noted his impressions with that pitiless French 
raillery which spares nothing. People have since 
accused the author of always turning round upon 
former hosts and benefactors, and an esteemed 
critic has written, " Chacun des livres de M. About 



M. EDMOND ABOUT, 275 

est un clief d'oeuvre et une maiivaise action." But 
if the truth could be known, M. About lias pro- 
bably made up bis mind that in accepting hospi- 
talities he is conferring an obligation, not receiving 
one ; nor is he quite wrong His manners are 
proverbially delightful, and none the less so for 
the spice of self-assertion which flavours them. 
People love to get him within a drawing-room 
circle of ladies, and to set him pulling men or 
women of the day to pieces in the quick, cool, and 
dry fashion which^is his characteristic. There are 
few things finer in the way of intellectual treats. 
Only, those who have enjoyed this instructive 
pleasure for an evening may as well take it kindly 
if the wit makes them in their turn serve the pur- 
poses of entertainment before other audiences. 

Edmond About was twenty-seven when he 
brought out his first work, and M. Buloz lost no 
time in ordering a novel of him for the Revue des 
Deux Mondes. M. About contributed " Tolla," a 
sort of autobiography, of which he drew the idea 
from an Italian novel published a few years previ- 
ously, but little read. He candidly admitted the 
imitation, but this did not save him from virulent 



276 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

accusations of plagiarism, and tli-e storm raised by 
this event had not yet lulled when the Theatre 
Frangais produced his three-act comedy, Ouillery, 
which a cabal (swelled, it is said, by the entire 
Greek colony of Paris, and by contingents from 
London and Marseilles) killed in two nights. 
Acute M. de Villemessant, always on the look-out 
for writers with a little spleen to vent, engaged 
the furious author to write chroniques in the new 
Figaro under a pseudonym, and M. About' s 
detractors were soon brought to book in a style 
they had not reckoned on. One must recall the 
political stagnation of France at that time to 
realise the interest which literary quarrels excited. 
Parisians pounced upon newspapers containing a 
good slashing lampoon by one writer upon another 
as on butter in siege time, and the readers of the 
Figaro had no reason to complain that Vallentin 
de Qu^villy (M. About' s nom de plume) stinted 
them either as to the amount or the quality of the 
invectives he lavished. The writer's connection 
with the Figaro, however, terminated in an abrupt 
and singular way. The Emperor having been 
shot at, M. About wrote lightly: — "The only 



M. EDMOND ABOUT. 277 

weapon to be relied on in trying to assassinate a 
sovereign is the dagger." These imprudent words 
very nearly dragged M. de Villemessant and his 
contributor before the Assizes under an indictment 
for inciting to murder ; as it was, the Figaro was 
only saved from extinction by M. de Quevilly's 
instant dismissal. At that moment M. About was 
contributing novels and art criticisms to the 
Moniteur, as well as chroniques to the Figaro, and 
the public naturally expected that his repudiation 
by the latter print would have been followed by 
his departure from the official sheet. But M. 
About made his peace with the Tuileries through 
the interposition of Prince Napoleon. That free- 
thinking pseudo-liberal highness, who loved to 
play (on an economical scale) the part of Mecaenas, 
patronised About, assured the Emperor that he 
was a man to be courted, not quarrelled with, and 
secured his stay on the Moniteur. M. About 
wrote there some of the most charming things in 
the French language. Within four years he con- 
tributed " Les Mariages de Paris," a series of 
novelettes ; " Le Roi des Montagues," a new satire 
on Greece, which acquired double force from the 



278 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

journal whicli published it, and again brought 
down Hellenes innumerable about the author's ears; 
" Germaine," " Les Echasses de Maitre Pierre," 
and that most laughable of stories, " Trente et 
Quarante." It is impossible to speak too highly 
of these delightful books. The style of them is 
perfect, the humour inexhaustible, and the 
morality always pure. In this respect M. About 
is an example and a reproach to the class of 
French writers who contend that there is no being 
amusing without dipping into licence. Edmond 
About' s novels are those of a gentleman, and he 
deserves to be classed honourably apart with 
MM. Erckmann-Chatrian, among the fiction writers 
of the Second Empire. 

One would be glad to say as much for the 
author's politics as for his books ; but the smiles 
of society had soon thawed the Republicanism he 
brought with him from the Ecole Normale. He 
was the Empress's favourite author, and knew it. 
No official rout was complete without him. He 
shunned many of his old friends ; then, finding 
himself cut by them in return, he began to 
sprinkle the vials of his bitterest ridicule on the 



M. ED2I0XD ABOUT. 279 

men and principles of tlie Liberal party. This 
was not a very brave performance towards a body 
of men wbo were beiag exiled and thrown iato 
gaol ; and tbougli !M. About has since returned to 
his first faith, Liberals can never quite forgive him 
for his cruel treatment of them at a time when it 
would have been at least gracious to be silent. 
In 1858 M. About received the Cross of the 
Legion of Honour, and shortly afterwards was 
sent, at Government expense, to report on the 
condition of Rome. He had never, though a 
Bonapartist, recanted his Positivist tenets. He 
was purely a Csesarist, of the same mood as Cassar 
himseH at that moment ; and in sending him to 
Eome, the Emperor well knew what kind of report 
to expect. ^I. About, on his return, published 
" La Question Eomaine," a pamphlet which stirred 
a commotion from one end of Europe to the other. 
It was bold, powerful, and fuU of the most im- 
placable logic, but its chief importance was derived 
from its being supposed to echo the Emperor's 
own views on the Itahan question, and if the 
Emperor had any clear views at that time, no 
doubt the pamphlet did represent them. From 



28o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

that moment M. About was generally regarded in 
France as one of the future Ministers of the 
Empire, and he himself had full confidence in his 
shining destiny. He contributed to Prince Na- 
poleon's organ, L' Opinion Rationale, a series of 
anti-Papal articles ; published two more political 
pamphlets, " La Nouvelle Carte d' Europe " and " La 
Prusse en 1860 ;" brought out a pendant to his 
first Greek book — " Rome Contemporaine ;" and 
accepted a standing engagement as leader writer 
on the semi-official Gonstitutionnel. Then, aspir- 
ing to consecrate Jiis reputation by a theatrical 
success, he wrote a drama — (raetowa— incautiously 
wrote, for the fine coalition of enemies he had 
arrayed against himself were only waiting for some 
such opportunity to pay off old scores ; and pay 
they did. Gaetana was brought out at the Odeon 
on the 2nd of January, 1862. All the author's 
foes, religious, political, and literary, seemed to 
have gathered there, and from the moment the 
curtain rose until the going down thereof the 
tumult of yells and hisses was inconceivable. At 
the close of the performance the Latin Quarter 
students, who had attended in a body to damn 



M. EDMOND ABOUT. 



the piece, marclied processionally to tlie office of 
tlie Constitutionnel in the Kue de Yalois, and gave 
three groans for that newspaper ; then they wended 
their way to the Passage Saulnier, where M. About 
resided, and favoured him with a charivari which 
lasted half an hour. Gaetana — a drama of un- 
doubted merit, by the way — had to be withdrawn 
on the fourth night, nor was it ever able to attain 
a longer" run in the provinces. During a couple 
of months the departmental cities where the piece 
was mounted became the scenes of turbulent 
demonstrations as in Paris, the clergy, in more 
than one instance, encouraging their flocks to go 
and hiss. It should be mentioned that the Figaro, 
where M. About had originally written, had be- 
come by this time foremost among his tormentors, 
the chief reason being that M. About had declined 
to return to the staff of that journal when solicited 
by M. de Yillemessant. The Figaro described the 
persecution of Gaetana as "an act of justice sug- 
gested by outraged public conscience." 

Ten years have elapsed since this time, and Ed- 
mond About has somehow retreated to a secondary 
place in public estimation. He has long ceased 



2&2 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

to be tliought a rising statesman. Not long after 
his marriage with Mademoiselle Guillerville, of 
Roncherolles, near Rouen (1864), he was invited 
to Compiegne, where the Emperor sounded 
him, and presumably found him wanting, for 
the rumours that arose as to a prefecturate 
being offered him proved unfounded. About 
was not indeed a man to take Napoleon's 
fancy. He is both too original in mind and 
too independent in action ; he would have 
given any Home Minister under whom he 
had served, or any Cabinet of which he was a 
member, a world of trouble. Besides his allegiance 
to Csesarism was necessarily dashed, in a man so 
able, with a large dose of precipitate liberalism 
which needed only a good shaking to be brought 
to the top. Once About was rid of his cer- 
tainty that the Empire intended rewarding him, 
he turned sour, flagellated despotism in society, 
threw up the place he had kept throughout on the 
Moniteur, and became one of the founders of the 
Oaulois, then (1868) a Liberal paper. The pre- 
text he gave for this change of camp was the 
policy of the Empire in the Roman question ; but 



M. EDMOND ABOUT. 



Ills conversion seemed, even to Parisians, astonisli- 
ingiy complete, for lie attacked tlie Government 
with so much vehemence that the sale of the 
Gaulois was interdicted in the streets. For a few 
weeks at the commencement of the Ollivier Minis- 
try he adopted a soothing tone again ; but then it 
was known that he expected being appointed to a 
diplomatic post. When the post was not forth- 
coming, mainly owing to the influence of the 
Empress, who was offended at the tergiversations 
of her pet author, he proceeded anew to great 
lengths in liberalism, the Soir being the paper 
which he selected as his vehicle. It was as war 
correspondent to this journal that he witnessed 
the Campaign of 1870, and wrote the graphic, 
but sensational letters for which the Germans 
probably wanted to punish him. M. About was 
the first Bonapartist writer to turn round and ad- 
vocate the dethronement of the Emperor ; he is 
now editor of the XlXme Siecle, an organ which 
professes to be Republican, but is in reality Aboutist, 
Positivist, and Prussophobian. One cannot but 
sympathise with M. About in his antipathy to the 
Germans, who have conquered the soil on which 



284 ^EN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

lie was born ; but one must remark that tbe in- 
sensate war he has of late waged against them by 
tongue and pen goes some way to prove that if he 
be the best of writers he would make but an in- 
different statesman. This in degree justifies the 
Emperor, who hesitated to make him a Prefect ; 
and M. Thiers, who a year ago asked time to con- 
sider before appointing him Minister at Lisbon, 



M. CASIMIE PEBIER. 

TT is not every one wto, being the intimate friend 
of princes, lias the courage to proclaim himself 
a Republican, and M. Casimir Pdrier has in this 
respect set a bold precedent. And yet, after all, 
why bold ? M. Pdrier receives the Count of Paris 
at his house, and soon after his guest has left him 
writes a letter, declaring that his private attach- 
ments do not influence his political convictions. If 
M. P^rier had received the Chinese Ambassadors, 
and stated afterwards that he still preferred the 
Christian faith to that of Confucius, nobody would 
have felt much surprised ; it is only, then, part of 
the unmanly idolisation of everything related to 
anybody who has ever worn a crown, which has led 
people to bestow either praise or witticism on an 
act which was merely natural and conscientious. 
In France a few millions of persons, shrewd in 



286 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

tlieir way, and logical, awake every morning and 
say : " Under wliat Government shall we be living 
this day month ? Supposing M. Thiers were to 
die, what then ? The Bourbons misgoverned us 
long, and we got rid of them in 1830, The 
Orleans family did very little good, and we ex- 
pelled them too. As for the Bonapartes, they 
have twice drained our pockets dry, and flooded 
our country with invaders." And now for the 
conclusion : " Seeing, then, how great a failure 
Monarchy has proved, what a truly merciful thing 
it would be if one of the cashiered families could 
be set over us again ! " In a witty, sagacious, 
and liberty-loving nation such as France, it is, 
oddly enough, a rarity when a man steps forward 
and argues : — " Seeing how great a failure 
Monarchy has always proved, I am of opinion that 
we try something else." M. Perier having had 
the sense to say this. Frenchmen are divided as to 
whether he can be in earnest, or whether, being in 
earnest, he is not angling for the Y ice-Presidency 
of the Republic. The larger section incline to a 
medley of both notions, and accordingly M. Perier 
passes amid the quidnuncs of politics for a states- 



M. CASIMIR PERIER. 2S7 

man of the designing sort wlio looks upon words 
merely as a bait to catch place. 

This comes in a degree of having had an emi- 
nent but autocratical father. M. Auguste-Casimir- 
Yictor-Laurent Perier, born at Paris on the 20th 
of August, 1811, is eldest son of a celebrated 
Minister who died in 1832. M. Casimir Perier 
the elder was, after M. Thiers and the Emperor 
Napoleon, the ruler who in the present century 
has best understood Frenchmen, and governed 
them with the firmest hand. A French Whig in 
politics, he had hesitated about overturning 
Charles X., and after having helped to do so had 
repented of it, and endeavoured to atone by trying 
to conduct Louis Philippe's Government on high 
Tory principles. He was patriotic, just, averse 
from tyranny, but not over-fond of any but theo- 
retical liberty ; as addicted to military enterprises 
as most Frenchmen, and a consummate party 
leader. Above all, he was honester than leading 
politicians always were in his day ; and the present 
M. Casimir Perier, who was twenty at the time of 
his father's Premiership, can have drawn from his 
career none but satisfactory lessons. The immense 



288 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

regret felt in France at the death of the great 
Prime Minister threw a kind of halo over his son. 
The inheritance of a famous name is at all times 
difficult to bear, but never more so, perhaps, than 
when the name is one rendered illustrious by 
statesmanship. Young Pdrier was early pushed 
into the official groove, and entered the diplo- 
matic service before he was out of his teens. 
He was appointed attach^ in London, then 
secretary of embassy at Brussels, and afterwards 
at the Hague ; and, by rapid promotion, 
soon found himself charg^ d'affaires at Naples, 
whence he was sent in the same capacity to St. 
Petersburg, and finally went as Minister Pleni- 
potentiary to Hanover. By this time, having 
attained his thirty-fifth year, he turned his 
thoughts to home politics, and in 1846 was elected 
member for the First Circumscription of Paris as 
a Moderate Liberal, giving an independent support 
to M. Guizot. Men fancied then that the throne 
of Louis Philippe was as secure as Napoleon's 
seemed after the plebiscitum. The question of 
the Spanish marriages had just been settled ; the 
Eepublicans were growing dispirited at the repeated 



M. CASIMIR PERIER. 289 

collapse of tlieir insurrectionary attempts ; and tlie 
subject of electoral reform, that was looming aliead, 
seemed one rather of parliamentary than of national 
interest. M. Casimir Perier favoured the extension 
of the suffrage, and the " adjonction des capacites," 
which was to give a vote to professional men, 
without reference to the amount of taxes they 
paid ; he took a prominent part in many of the 
debates ; grew more and more Thiersist as M. 
Guizot became more obstinate ; and in public 
opinion was booked for an Under-Secretary ship of 
State under the first coalition Cabinet, which should 
be led by some such man as M. Odillon Barrot. 
The revolution of 1848 nipped all his hopes short, 
and M. Perier lived for some time in retirement, 
amusing himself with farming ; for though elected 
(second out of five candidates, for the Department 
of the Aube, where his estates are situated) to the 
Legislative Assembly in 1849, he had not yet 
become a convert to Eepublicanism, and his 
Orleanist proclivities debarred him from accepting 
any post under a democratical Government. He 
voted, however, with the majority, was a member of 
the "Commission de Permanence," and generally 



290 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

supported the policy of tlie Elysde, till tlie forma- 
tion of the Ministry whicli preceded the cou-p d'etat, 
against which he protested, and was imprisoned 
several days at Mont Valerian in consequence. 
Approving of despotism no more than of anarchy, 
he remained in retirement during the Empire. 
True to his convictions, he was coquetted with by 
successive prefects, and declining to perceive the 
advantages of Bonapartist government, was opposed 
by official candidates at all the elections. He 
succeeded, however, in getting himself returned 
Councillor-General in 1864 ; and in 1869 obtained 
over 15,000 votes in his native department, the 
Aube, which had elected him in 1849. But these 
were poor triumphs for a man who must have 
counted on becoming Prime Minister some day, 
like his father ; and Liberal Frenchmen owe a 
debt of gratitude to M. Perier for having, along 
with other patriots, declined to hold any terms 
with the meretricious regime which spared no 
brilliant promises to win him. During the 
Franco-German war, M. Perier continued to live 
quietly on his property at Pont-sur-Seine, but sent 
his son to join the defenders of Paris. Neverthe- 



M. CASIMIR PERIER. 291 

less, lie was arrested by the Germans on a false 
charge, shut up in the prison of Troyes, and 
transferred to Rheims to be tried by a court- 
martial. He was liberated, however, under the 
terms of the armistice as a candidate for the 
National Assembly ; and on the elections of the 
8th of February, 1871, was chosen representative 
for Isere (Bouches du Rhone), by 47,776 votes, 
and also for the Department of the Aube, by 
88,548 votes out of 56,484 voters. He now sits 
for the Department of the Aube, and his skill as a 
financier caused him to be selected as Reporter of 
the Exceptional Budget of 1871, which imposed 
500,000,000 francs of new taxes on the French 
people. On the accession to power of M. Thiers, 
it was natural that M. Perier should receive 
his reward, if reward it be to be appointed 
Cabinet Minister at a time when all . parties 
are up in arms against each other. His short 
stay at the Home Office was marked by an 
admixture of vigour and conciliation. He was 
much liked by his prefects, who found in him a 
resolute but never meddling chief; and on his 
retirement from the Cabinet, owing principally to 



292 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

his financial antagonism with M. Thiers, the general 
hope among all Government employes was that he 
would soon come back again. 

Since then M. Casimir Perier has been men- 
tioned in connection with a possible Triumvirate, 
to include Marshal MacMahon and M. Gr^vy, and 
to succeed M. Thiers in the event of the latter's 
abrupt resignation. Those who broached this 
curious scheme must know as little of M. Perier 
as of the two other statesmen. A thoughtful, 
scholarly politician, with a dash of the diplomatist, 
and some acid humour in his composition, M. Pdrier 
would not be the man to act pleasantly in any 
political combination where his part was not clearly 
defined. He would work well as subaltern, better 
still as chief, but he would soon break up a Trium- 
virate where there were two colleagues holding a 
rank and aspiring to wield an influence equal to 
his own. M. Casimir Perier has the bluff, blue- 
eyed, whiskered face of the Anglo-Saxon race. 
When these traits appear in Frenchmen, they 
prognosticate a sj)irit of enterprise and an obsti- 
nacy which nothing can bend. M. Perier has 
declared himself a Republican, but this does not 



M. CASIMIR PERIER, 293 

mean that he is a Radical. His convictions have 
indeed not altered a jot since 1846, except in the 
one point which concerns an elective instead of an 
hereditary Chief of the Executive. He sits among 
the deputies of the Right Centre, and has voted in 
favour of the preliminaries of peace, the municipal 
law, the abrogation of the laws of exile, the valida- 
tion of the elections of the royal princes, and 
the maintenance of treaties of commerce, but 
against the Government on the question of the 
temporal power. He is no friend to M. Gam- 
betta, and would not co-operate with him. He 
would not sanction any scheme which should 
revolutionise the French judicial system (the 
most needed of all reforms), or go too great 
lengths in decentralisation. If he were President 
he would not diminish the standing army by a 
single man, nor (other much -needed reform) 
retrench on the navy estimates ; nor, again, would 
he be very friendly to Victor Emmanuel. But the 
press would have an easy time of it under him, 
for one of his standing complaints whilst Minister 
was that M. Dufaure and General Ladmirault 
drove him to take measures against newspapers 



294 ^^EN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

wliicli were quite foreign to his instincts, and 
whicL. lie deemed quite useless. Again, if M. 
Casimir Perier were President, lie would be a 
devoted friend to England, wliich lie admires with 
all his heart and soul. But it is to be feared he 
will never be President. The next French Presi- 
dent will, if there be a next, be a Republican in 
the pure Radical sense of the term, probably not 
a simple Constitutionahst. 



M. JULES SIMOTT. 

A MAN wlio lias succeeded in politics rather by 
the exercise of perseverance than by a display 
of brilliant qualities, must always expect that other 
men who have not succeeded will accuse him of 
being a schemer. Thus, M. Jules Simon having 
been Minister of Public Instruction during two 
years of trouble, it is part of the cant current 
among cafe politicians, to joke about his long 
tenure of oflS.ce, as doing honour rather to his 
suppleness of mind than to his stoutness of 
principle. Perhaps they who thus joke would be 
well employed in considering whether a man who 
retains a trying post two years under circum- 
stances unusually difl&cult does not from this 
very fact show his fitness to hold it. But the 
truth is, M. Simon has done more than retain 
his place. He has brought his adversaries to own 
that no Minister could have discharged his func- 



296 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

tions witL. more tact, and less party spirit. He 
"has been active without fussiness, bold at inno- 
vating where occasion required it, but very tem- 
perate in asserting bis authority, and especially 
sedulous not to subvert old customs for the mere 
pleasure of changing. Moreover, having to deal 
with that most irritable section of mankind, artists 
and literary men, he has made himself rather a 
favourite with these gentlemen. The only one 
among the men of the 4th September who has 
remained in office, he was favoured eighteen 
months ago with more than his fair share of the 
unpopularity so freely lavished upon his col- 
leagues. At present the great difficulty would 
be to find him a successor who would prove half 
so acceptable to both sides of the Assembly — to 
Monarchists as well as Republicans. 

M. Jules Fran9ois Simon (whose original name 
was Suisse) was born on the 31st of December, 
1814, at L' Orient, in Brittany. He looks much 
younger than his age, being strongly built and, 
as the French say, " bien conserve ; " he has 
also the prosperous mien, erect gait, and polished 
manners which are more often found in Govern- 



JULES SIMON. 297 



ment dignitaries of long standing and in general 
officers tlian in men whose life has been given 
to scholarship and philosophy. This only proves, 
however, what deception there may be in 
appearances, M. Jules Simon is nothing if not 
a man of letters. At school he passed for an 
inveterate bookworm, and yet it is on record that 
having been dubbed with this title by a school- 
fellow, since become a distinguished general, he 
entered into a combat with him, which turned out 
better than that of Wellington with Bobus Smith. 
Soon after finishing his studies at the colleges 
of L' Orient and Vannes, he was appointed assist- 
ant professor at the college of Rennes ; was ad- 
mitted to the Ecole Normale (1833), and made 
such good use of his two years' stay there that he 
was only suffered to remain a year in a secondary 
post at the Lyc^e of Caen, and was then transferred 
to Versailles. This system of moving intelligent 
professors about the country, like chessmen, has 
not many advantages. The . inducement it offers 
to ambitious young scholars to give sensational 
lectures instead of sober instruction is often irre- 
sistible ; and M. Simon was taxed by more than 



298 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

one bourgeois father with having lectured above 
the heads of his pupils in the hope of attracting 
the attention of the Minister of Public Instruction. 
However this might be, M. Simon was as bril- 
liantly successful at Versailles as he had been in 
Normandy, The best of Victor Cousin's pupils, 
he was a more facile and more colloquial orator 
than his master ; and though of course a philo- 
sopher of inferior calibre, had the talent to 
persuade not a few that he would some day 
outshine him. Recalled to Paris (1838), he 
was promoted to an assistant -professorship at 
the Ecole Normale ; and in 1839, being then 
but five-and-twenty years old, supplemented 
M. Cousin in his chair of philosophy at the Sor- 
bonne. This lectureship, which M. Simon held 
for twelve years, established his reputation, but 
also confined it within its due limits. It became 
apparent that Jules Simon was a clever, well-read, 
and very liberal-minded man, but that he was not 
deep enough to found a new school of philosophy 
of his own, or even to add much strength to that 
of which he was a disciple ; but that he had a 
taste and an aptitude for politics. He thought a 



M. JULES SIMON. 299 

good deal of economical reforms ; touclied in Ms 
lectures on tlie condition of tlie working classes ; 
and broaclied views wliicli seemed very bold thirty 
years ago on tlie relation between labour and 
capital. He was besides a diligent contributor to 
tlie Revue des Deux Mondes, and published learned 
and not too abstruse treatises on Plato, Aristotle, 
and the School of Alexandria. In 1845, the name 
he had acquired as a public educator counselled 
the Government to reward him with the -Legion of 
Honour; and in 1846, feeling strong enough to 
fly on his OAvn wings, he offered himself to the 
electors of the Cotes du Nord as a moderate and 
constitutional oppositionist of the Thiers order. 
But here he failed, for he had the clergy against 
him. The Breton priests vowed it was singular 
impudence in an " Infidel" to come and solicit 
the suffrages of their Catholic flocks, and they 
organised against him demonstrations which ex- 
cited a good deal of talk at the time, but 
which somehow — such are the variations of 
human nature — did not prevent him from being 
returned enthusiastically in 1848 by the very 
electors who, in 1846, would have been ready to 



300 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

burn him under a churcli porch. In the Con- 
stituent Assembly M. Simon became an authority 
on educational matters, and by-and-by was elected 
a Councillor of State by the National Assembly. 
His votes as a deputy had been always with the 
Left Centre, and his speeches advocated moderate 
Liberalism. During the civil warfare of June he 
risked his life with the most praiseworthy courage 
in facing the insurrectionary barricades, and pene- 
trating into the rebel quarters to play the part of 
conciliator ; and it is related that he made a really 
noble answer to the revolutionist Barthelemy, who, 
having caught him roughly by the arm, was shout- 
ing, " Supposing we were to serve you like the 
traitor Brea ? " "I wish you would," answered 
Simon quietly, " if only you would cease firing 
afterwards." 

Up to the time of the cowp d'etat, Jules Simon's 
politics had been rather eclectic than Republican, 
and he might easily have embraced the plea 
adopted by many who are now his detractors, and 
have done homage to the new Empire under pre- 
tence of its having been sanctioned by the people. 
Had he taken this course his career would probably 



M. JULES SIMON. 301 

have been like M, Duruy's. He would liave been 
appointed Minister of Public Instruction and Sena- 
tor, with this difference, however, that his talent 
for ingratiating himself even with adversaries 
would have given him a securer hold upon his 
seals than the shallow minister and historian of 
the Second Empire ever had. But M. Simon — 
the " schemer " — was not so much of a man of 
business as to prefer his personal interests to the 
promptings of his conscience. He uttered a most 
fearless and dignified protest in the Sorbonne 
against the outrage upon liberty which had been 
consummated, and his lectures were suppressed by 
a special decree in consequence. M. Simon had 
no private fortune, and his political honesty com- 
pelled him to begin the battle of life over again. 
He did so bravely and unrepiningly. He went 
back to his desk, plunged deeper than he had 
done before into the study of political economy, and 
produced a series of books of which " L'Ouvriere" 
in particular achieved a rapid popularity, and is 
almost as much read now as it was on its first 
appearance. Then, finding all lecture rooms in 
France closed to him, he started in 1855 on a 



302 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

round of "conferences" in Belgium, and every where 
— at Liege, Gand, Bruges, and Brussels — was 
listened to with tlie deepest interest. A hint con- 
veyed by the French Ministers to the Belgian 
Cabinet put a stop to these successes, which the 
Imperial Government considered, and with reason, 
as intended affronts upon itself. M. Simon came 
back to France again, and in 1861 caused a new 
stir by some lectures at St. Quentin and Verviers, 
intended to promote the creation of "■ cites ouv- 
rieres " (model lodging-houses). The Prefect of 
Police conveyed to him, through the medium of a 
common friend, that the Government could not 
allow any movement for the improvement of the 
working classes to be undertaken, unless the name 
of Napoleon was mentioned eulogistically in con- 
nection with it. M. Simon answered that 60,000 
francs had been raised in one city and 240,000 
francs in another on behalf of the model lodsfinsf- 
house movement without the co-operation of Napo- 
leon's name, and that he really could not see what 
that name had to do with the matter. He was 
told in reply, that he had better take care of him- 
self, and that the eye of the Eue de Jerusalem 



M. JULES SIMON. 303 

would be upon him. From this moment friends 
who had a foot in both camps, Liberal and Cgesa- 
rian — MM. Duruy, Caro, and others— began to 
play the pumps of cajolery on Jules Simon. They 
tried to win him over. The Empire wanted a man 
of tact, sense, and spirit to undertake the Education 
Department, in which the square-headed M. Rou- 
land was floundering knee deep. "A salary of 
£4,000 a year," said one. "House rent free, 
patronage and perquisites," insinuated another. 
" The chance of doing good," put in a third tempter. 
" And the friendship of the Empress, who reads all 
your books and admires them," said a fourth. M. 
Jules Simon was lodging in a fifth floor, Place de 
la Madeleine. The lodgings were not large nor 
the furniture sumptuous. He retorted with a 
quiet smile, " I attach little importance to forms. 
I am an advocate of simple freedom. Bring me 
liberty in any form, with the Orleans princes, with 
the Republic, or even with Napoleon, and I am 
ready to serve you. But I am not a footman, and 
the Ministership you would give me under a 
regime such as this would be a menial ofiice, and 
nothing more." At the general elections of 1869 



304 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC, 

the name of Jules Simon was one of the most 
popular in the country. He was proposed as a 
candidate for a great number of departments, and no 
less than 100,000 votes were recorded in his favour. 
He was chosen for the Gironde by 17,530 votes out 
of 29,845 voters, and for Paris by 30,305 votes 
out of 39,701 voters, as against 8,742 votes given 
to the Government candidate. After the plebis- 
citum of the 8th of May, 1870, he made a bold 
and eloquent protest against the manner in which 
the lists of free and independent voters had been 
cooked. He offered an energetic opposition to the 
declaration of war against Prussia, and on the 
revolution of the 4th of September following was 
proclaimed, together with all the representatives 
of Paris, a member of the Government of National 
Defence installed at the Hotel de Ville. On the 
following day, September 5th, he was appointed 
Minister of Public Instruction, Worship, and Fine 
Arts. One of the first acts of his administration 
was the abolition of the theatrical censorship 
(since re-established), and the suppression of sub- 
ventions to the ex-imperial houses. He opened 
the library of the Senate to the public, and 



M. JULES SIMON. 305 

granted the free use of tlie Luxembourg Palace for 
the meetings of learned societies ; gave the names 
of Corneille, Descartes, and Condorcet to the prin- 
cipal educational establishments in Paris, thereby- 
instituting literary and scientific recollections for 
dynastic titles. He restored to the faculty of 
medicine in Paris the right of assembling, on the 
simple convocation of the dean, to deliberate upon 
all questions interesting to the progress of their 
studies ; and submitted to the vote of a majority 
the granting of exhibitions in the public schools. 

Taken prisoner during the insurrection on the 
night of the 31st of October, he was rescued by 
the National Guard ; and on the 31st of January, 
1871, within a few days after the capitulation of 
Paris, he set out for Bordeaux, with full powers, 
for the possible case of M. Gambetta refasing to 
subscribe to the conditions of surrender. Under 
these difficult circumstances he displayed a good 
deal of firmness and tact. He annulled the 
decree which had declared official candidates and 
persons who had been employed under the Empire 
ineligible for re-election ; and, in spite of the noisy 
partisanship of the south, so circumvented M. 
X 



3o6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Gambetta, tliat tlie Dictator resigned all authority, 
and tlie elections of the 8th of February were con- 
ducted with as much regularity as possible. M. 
Simon was not chosen again for Paris, but was 
elected deputy for the Marne, fifth on a list of eight 
candidates, and obtained 34,727 votes. M. Thiers 
then appointed him Minister of Public Instruction 
in the "Conciliation" Cabinet of the 19th of 
February. During the Commune, M. Simon 
addressed a circular letter to the rectors of uni- 
versities, enjoining them to forbid their professors 
to write articles in the Radical newsjDapers, and 
he was passionately attacked in consequence. 
He proposed and carried the law for rebuilding 
the Napoleon Column in the Place Vendome, and 
for repairing the Expiatory Chapel (for Louis 
XVI.) ; and as Minister of Worship he ordered 
the public prayers decreed by the National 
Assembly on the 16th of May. He has voted 
for the abrogation of the laws of exile, the 
customs treaty, and the return of the National 
Assembly to Paris. 

Four Ministers have since the Revolution 
engraved their names deep on the records of 



M. JULES SIMON. 307 

the Education Department — MM. Guizot, Cousin, 
de Salvandy, and Duruy. The last named, 
though a Csesarist and an egotist, meant well, but 
he did harm. It was his boast that at any 
moment in the day when he drew out his watch 
every schoolboy in France was repeating the same 
lesson. Thus no allowance for individuality, for 
backward provinces, or for districts that seemed 
more enlightened — one obdurate rule, hard, co- 
gent, and absurd. M. Jules Simon has come just 
in time to save France from being crushed down 
under the force of a system which was making of 
education a common routine, and a tyranny in- 
stead of a blessing. When elected to the 
Corps Ldgislatif, M. Simon said in his pro- 
gramme : — " Education should be the instruc- 
tion of children in the pleasantest and most 
thorough way possible." A rural schoolmaster 
being asked not more than a month ago what he 
thought of M. Simon's governance as compared to 
M. Duruy' s, replied, " Well, he sends us Erckmann- 
Chatrian's tales instead of ' Telemaque,' and tells 
us to mind our pupils more and politics less. 
(Schoolmasters used to be the prime electoral 



3o8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

agents under the Empire.) He is not such, a 
Minister as the others — in fact, rather a mild one 
all over, I fancy." This verdict might be com- 
mended to the shrewd diviners who picture M. 
Simon as being patiently engaged in setting crafty 
nets for catching — the vacated shoes of M. Thiers. 



M. yictoeie:n^ saedou. 

rpHE portraits of the First Napoleon at the time 
when he was only General Bonaparte, and had 
not yet won at Marengo, show a lanky young man 
with sunken cheeks, and hair falling to within an 
inch of his shoulders. M. Yictorien Sardou might 
be taken for a copy of that picture, and he has 
this further point of resemblance with his proto- 
type — that he has succeeded quite as rapidly in 
his profession as the great captain did in his, and 
by victories not less startling and unexpected. 
M. Sardou was born at Paris, September 7th, 
1831, and he already stands chief among French 
playwrights ; for though there are plenty who 
distance him in merit, yet he is the founder 
of a school whose adepts are constantly on 
the increase, a-ad it is an unquestionable fact 
that several amongst his brother dramatists who 
have been loudest in denouncing his productions 



3IO MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC, 

as a desecration of art, have also been tlie first to 
undergo his influence. M. Emile Augier is one of 
these, though probably he would be much shocked 
to hear it. M. Dumas held good for a time, but one 
of his last pieces, La Princesse George, evinces a 
conversion to many of M. Sardou's methods. MM. 
Halevy, Meilhac, Cadol, and the whole generation 
of rising playwrights, are Sardouists purely and 
simply. 

It takes patience, study, and unhurried labour, 
not to mention natural gifts, to make a first-class 
writer ; it needs but a sense of humour and an in- 
tuitive perception into the foibles of the age to 
make a successful one. M. Sardou, however, might 
have been both a good and a successful writer if 
he had pleased ; for, contrary to the rule that 
obtains among most French playwrights, he is a 
man of considerable erudition. His favourite 
study is history ; he is well read in archaeology ; 
and a twelvemonth ago, when Le Roi Carotte was 
being rehearsed at the Gaitd, the manager of that 
theatre was not a little surprised to hear him give 
directions as to classic scenery and costume that 
were too minute and accurate to have been read 



M. VICTORIEN SARDOU. 



up for the occasion. Let it be added tliat tlie 
surprise was tlie greater as M. Sardou had just 
been showing that he knew all about insects. The 
butterfly and beetle pageant in the burlesque is all 
his own. He sends his manuscripts to managers 
with scenic and decorative instructions so precise 
as to leave little margin for the imagination of 
painters or costumiers. These artists often grumble, 
and aver that other authors are not so dictatorial. 
But M. Sardou takes pattern by no man ; he drills 
his actors and actresses as Napoleon did his armies, 
and it has a curious effect upon any one who has 
watched him draw a learned treatise on inscriptions 
from his pocket during a rehearsal, to see him 
bound of a sudden before the footlights, and 
trounce an indolent actress in the very roundest of 
vernaculars. M. Sardou served a very rough 
apprenticeship before becoming what he is. The 
son of a professor, he was destined for the medical 
profession ; but lacking taste for that career, and, 
above all, money to perfect his studies in it, he 
turned tutor, gave lessons in history, philosophy, 
and mathematics, and eked out his gains by contri- 
buting historical or archaeological essays to encj'-- 



312 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

clopgedias and second-rate reviews. He also did a 
little dramatic criticism for obscure newspapers, 
but liis earnings wore miserable, antl tbere were 
few Latin-Quartier students at that time so out at 
elbows as himself. In 1853 lie wrote a drama, 
La Taverne des Etudiants, and offered it to tbe 
Oddon. It was accepted and performed tlie follow- 
ing year, but it failed, and the young author, con- 
vinced that he had no vocation for stage work, 
went back to his pupils and his garret, making no 
effort to retrieve his first mischance for the next five 
years. In the interval he married Mademoiselle 
de Brdcourt, under very romantic circumstances. 
His wife was an actress, who, lodging in the same 
house as himself, and hearing that there was a young 
man on the sixth floor lying ill from scarlet fever, 
and utterly destitute, nursed him from pure charity. 
On recovering M. Sardou offered her his hand, and 
the pair began life on nothing. It happened, how- 
ever, that Madame Sardou was a friend of Mdlle. 
Dejazet, who had recently (1858) obtained licence 
to open a theatre, and she advised her not very 
sanguine husband to try his hand at a new piece, 
and submit it to the manageress. M. Sardou 



M. yiCTORIEN SARDOU. 313 

wrote tlie farce of Candide, and took it in person 
to Mdlle. Dejazet's country-house, where, it seems, 
his intelligent face, rather than the letter of recom- 
mendation he brought, secured him a welcome. 
Mdlle. D^jazet never refused help to struggling 
talent. She read Sardou's piece with him there 
and then in her garden, and accepted it at once, 
predicting that, though hurriedly written and full 
of episodes that were not very new, it would be a 
success from its liveliness. This prophecy was 
realised. M. Sardou's hasty feat of writing had 
stood him in good stead, for it had made him pro- 
duce a play where the incidents succeeded each 
other at an unhalting pace. There were few re- 
flections and no long soliloquies ; the dialogue was 
sharp and precipitate ; no dull spectator (and the 
dull are generally a majority in every audience) 
would go to sleep during such a piece. Seeing how 
thoroughly he had succeeded by the slovenliness 
which should have ensured his failure, M. Sardou 
from that moment devoted himself to the writing 
of plays, headlong. Unlike M. Dumas, who medi- 
tates upon all his works until they bear an almost 
painful evidence of condensed thought, M. Sardou 



314 MEN OF THE THIRD PEPUBLIC. 

sits down and gives liis pen the rein. No play of 
liis, with the single exception of Patrie, has ever 
taken him more than six weeks to write ; and as 
Patrie is perhaps the best of his works, it was 
hoped by his admirers that, having amassed a large 
fortune by writing hurriedly, he would now take to 
writing more slowly and carefully for fame's sake. 
But M. Sardou contends that the public chiefly 
desire to be amused, and that the only way to amuse 
them, and by so doing to retain one's popularity 
(which he seems to class above fame), is to supply 
them with sensation. His unbroken series of 
triumphs certainly go some way to justify this 
supposition. After Oandide his other pieces fol- 
lowed rapidly. He wrote for the The'atre Dejazet, 
the Palais Royal, the Vaudeville, and the Gymnase. 
'Not a single play failed ; all were applauded en- 
thusiastically ; and a few — I^os Intimes, Pattes de 
Mouches, La Famille Beno'don, and Nos Bons Vil- 
lageois amongst others — were run after in a manner 
almost unprecedented in French dramatic annals. 

When one analyses a play of M. Sardou' s, one is 
astonished at the flimsy and worn-out materials of 
which it is composed. The plots are all old ones 



M. VICTORIEN SARDOU. 315 

tinkered up, and often not so much as varnished 
anew. The " situations " have all been made to 
do service before by other authors, and the dialogue 
is generally a mere rechauffe of the jests and 
banter that have appeared in light-headed news- 
papers. M. Sardou has been accused over and 
over again of plagiarism, and occasionally proofs 
positive have been furnished by his indicters ; but 
proofs were superfluous, for he has never denied 
the charge, asserting that an author has as much 
right as the bee to suck flowers right and left in 
order to make honey. What no one can deny is, 
that M. Sardou has an incomparable faculty for 
weaving out of his old materials comedies which 
beguile one into listening till the fall of the cur- 
tain. The well-read critic may shrug his shoulders 
as he goes home, and wonder how he can have sat 
patiently to hear things so often heard before ; 
but he has been amused, and therefore cannot help 
feeling towards M. Sardou as towards a clever con- 
juror. Another thing to be said for M. Sardou is 
that his works have never been redolent of the 
cynicism and brutal contempt lor morality which 
M. Dumas afi'ects. They are very French plays, 



3i6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

marked by episodes wliicli are sometimes in bad 
taste, and now and then downrigbtly coarse {e.g., 
Nos Intimes, Act 3), but tbey are not immoral. 
M. Sardou has never, under a pretence of being a 
psychological anatomist, gloated over the social 
sores which public decency requires should be 
kept covered. It was thought, some months 
back, that after being the introducer of sensation- 
alism into French comedy, M. Sardou would have 
the honour of restoring politics to the stage. But 
the recent interdict of M. Halt's Madame Frainex, 
which was a counterpart of Rahagas, shows that 
the Government is not very anxious to repeat the 
experiment which in the case of M. Sardou' s play 
led to such noisy results. This is, perhaps, a 
pJH^' for after having had the charlatanry of 
Eepublican adventurers displayed before them, the 
play-going public should have been allowed a 
glimpse of royalty's seamy side. It is even 
doubtful whether, if he had been given the 
chance, M. Sardou would not himself have written 
some such play as Madame Frainex, in order to 
undeceive those who, on the strength of Rahagas, 
have taxed him too hastily with being a Bona- 



M. VICTORIEN SARDOU. 317 

partist. M. Sardou lias no political flag. He is 
shrewd enough to detect the failings of most 
systems elaborated for the governance of men, and 
humour enough to turn the same to good account 
in his comedies. But he is the first to repudiate 
all pretension of being a political reformer. Deco- 
rated by the Emperor, possessed of a large fortune, 
residing in a truly princely villa at Marly, and 
lately married for the second time, he is not one 
of those men who can afford to be revolutionists. 
On the other hand, the recollection of his early 
years of penury inspires him with a keen sympathy 
for the unfortunates who are driven by hunger 
and ignorance into following the mountebanks — 
royal or popular — who trade on the needs and 
credulity of the masses. M. Sardou is a man 
whose brain is worthy of better things than it has 
ever been set to perform. It is a powerful mill 
that has been made to grind only chaff. If his 
career were to close now, it would leave a sincere 
regret in the minds of those Avho knew him and 
would wish to see him produce a work that should 
take a permanent place in French literature. But 
he is young, and may amend. 



ADMIEAL POTHUATT. 

TF the French could only be cured of the notion 
that there must some day be a war with Eng- 
land, they might reduce their fleet by half, and 
considerably lighten their budget without much 
diminishing their effective strength, their navy 
being rather a costly ornament than a useful 
defence. On the other hand, the navy is so 
popular, its officers and men form so brave and 
respected a part of the nation, that it may be 
doubted whether the French taxpayer, who is 
never a very stingy person, would not rather see 
his dues increased than consent to any reduction 
in a service which is even dearer to him than his 
army. Frenchmen look upon their sailors with a 
pride which is not of recent growth, and which 
has stood the test of all reverses. Sailors have 
never been made to play a part in politics — that 
may be one of the reasons for their popularity. 



ADMIRAL POTHUAU. 319 

They have been defeated, but always with honour. 
Then, in the last war, wherever they appeared, it 
was to set the example of all the qualities in which 
the land forces seemed deficient. The men Avere 
well disciplined, cool, hardy, and did their work 
without bragging ; the officers were able, chival- 
rous gentlemen. It cannot be said that the 
jealousy cherished by military men towards the 
sister service was much allayed by a campaign in 
which their own defects came out so conspicuously 
beside the merits of their rivals. But the favour- 
able impression which the French navy produced 
upon the nation at large will be ineffaceable. 

No better man could have been selected for the 
task of governing and reorganising the naval forces 
at this moment than Yice-Admiral Louis Pierre 
Alexis Pothuau. It has always been a moot point 
whether a civilian or a sailor should be at the 
head of the Navy Department, and the obstructive 
spirits of many of the admiral-ministers has led re- 
formers to prefer civilians. But Admiral Pothuau, 
whom shrcAvd M. Thiers singled out the moment he 
came into power, has all the liberal-mindedness of 
a clever civilian allied to professional activity and 



320 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

experience. There is a story of a Frencli Minister 
of Marine who, being asked on his retirement what 
he had done during four years' tenure of office, 
answered with some solemnity : " I left everything 
as I found it, and work enough too, considering 
the number of innovators who were always pester- 
ing me ! " Another — but this was a Banish 
Minister — ^being similarly interrogated, replied : 
" Well, I gave the fleet new uniforms and the 
ships new guns ; I built new frigates ; I have put 
new men in command, and introduced new rules 
into every branch of the service." Each of these 
statesmen might have done better, and they 
illustrate the two rocks from which naval admi- 
nistrators have to steer clear. The man who 
wants to do too much — who comes into his 
department with the idea of changing the very 
thole-pins in the ships' gigs, — that man soon runs 
athwart his colleague in the Finance Department, 
rendf^rs all the officers in the service sulky, and is 
popular only with contractors. Contrariwise, the 
Minister who shuts his ear to inventors, will have 
nothing to say \o good advisers, and snubs with 
routinely haughtiness all legislators who examine 



ADMIRAL POTHUAU. 321 

liis estimates, — tliat Minister — too well known a 
type unfortunately — acts as corrodingly upon his 
department as mildew. 

Admiral Potliuau has just the sort of collected 
mind necessary to keep him from both extremes. 
Born at Paris on the 30th of October, 1815, 
he entered the Naval School in 1830, being 
then fifteen, and four years later had already 
so distinguished himself that his captain wrote 
of him — "M. Pothuau is a young officer of the 
greatest promise ; full of honour ; zealous and 
punctual in his duties." Superlatives being 
rather charily bestowed by superior officers ujDon 
subalterns, this might count for an enviable 
certificate, and young Pothuau' s promotion from 
the rank of second-class to first-class " aspirant," 
and then to his lieutenancy, followed rapidly. 
By the time he got his epaulette he had sailed 
over most of the seas of the world. There was no 
fighting to speak of then, but the introduction of 
steam into the navy had given a great stimulus 
to voyages of exploration, and it was Pothuau' s 
luck to be sent on several of these. In 1840 he 
was appointed aide-de-camp to his uncle. Admiral 
T 



322 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Duperr^, tlien Naval Minister, and held tliis post 
for a year, and a most eventful year, for it was 
during tliat twelvemonth that Napoleon's ashes 
were brought from St. Helena, and that Prince de 
Joinville made the crew of the Belle Poiile swear 
to let him blow up the ship should the English 
attack it. The English had no thought of attack- 
ing it, but rumours of war were rife, thanks to the 
firm policy of Lord Palmerston and to the excited 
bewilderment of M. Thiers, and Lieutenant Pothuau 
had all the advantage of being initiated into the 
preparations for a great struggle. He profited by 
the departmental lessons he learned, as he had 
benefited before by his studies on board ship 
during long cruises, and was accounted so bril- 
liant an officer that in 1843, when but twenty- 
eight, he was proposed for the Cross of the Legion 
of Honour — a distinction less lavished then than 
it has been since. A peculiarity about Lieutenant 
Pothuau was that he displayed much less Anglo- 
phobia than the average French naval officers of 
that day. That he looked forward with confidence 
to avenging Trafalgar in case of war is a matter of 
course, but his defiance of "Albion" never went 



ADMIRAL POTHUAU. 323 

tlie spitfire lengths of the Prince de Joinville's, 
who used to talk at mess as if he could fight the 
British fleet single-handed, and indoctrinated not 
a few brother sailors with that way of thinking. 
Pothuau's good sense and modesty did not stand 
him in bad stead, however, with the spoilt child 
of the French navy. The Prince liked him well, 
and in 1846 obtained for him the command of 
the Royal yacht Heine Amelie — an honour which 
would have been the prelude to a speedy cap- 
taincy, and to an unbroken succession of pro- 
motions thereafter, had the Orleans Monarchy 
lasted, but which, as it was, served Pothuau but 
poorly, when the Eepublic of 1848 came, and 
relieved him of his ship. He did not obtain his 
captaincy — and only then after he had been re- 
peatedly passed over — until December, 1856 ; and 
as the Empire systematically kept down those 
who had been favoured by the Orleans dynasty, 
and declined noisily to revile their benefactors 
afterwards, means might possibly have been found 
for making him leave the service altogether, had 
not his galla,nt conduct during the Crimean war 
opportunely atoned for his having been an Or- 



324 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

leanist. He commanded a sloop of war, the 
Gaton, at the bombardment of Odessa, and was 
then sent to serve in the naval land batteries 
that were besieging Sebastopol. Here he was 
promoted from frigate to ship captaincy, and on 
his return to France was appointed assistant 
member to the Naval Board of Works. From 
this moment his career was smooth enough. He 
commanded the iron-clad Bretagne in the Italian 
war, obtained his rank of rear-admiral in 1864, 
and was twice (1861-2 and 1869-70) deputed to 
serve as member of the Admiralty Council. His 
services during these years, however, were not of 
a kind to bring him prominently before the public, 
and it was only at the siege of Paris that the 
opportunity was afforded him of giving scope to 
his abilities. As commander of -Forts Issy, Bicetre, 
Montrouge, and Ivry, and by-and-by as General 
Commanding the 7th Division of the Third Army 
Corps, he showed qualities which would have been 
invaluable aids to a general with more dash in him 
than Trochu. His energy was indefatigable, and 
his buoyancy of mind quite contagious. Parisians 
wondered to see his sailors working under him 



ADMIRAL POTHUAU. 325 

with sucli will and spirits, as if victory were 
always assured ; and at the armistice elections, 
on the 8th of February, 1871, the city elected 
him along with Admiral Saisset to be one of 
the deputies of the Seine. He had then just 
been gazetted Grand Officer of the Legion' of 
Honour and Vice- Admiral ; and it was a common 
saying in Paris that if La Ronciere le Nourry, 
Saisset, and Pothuau had been the commanding 
triumvirate instead of Trochu, Vinoy, and Ducrot, 
the siege might not have ended as it did. 

Yice-Admiral Pothuau was chosen deputy 
for the Seine, thirteenth of forty-three candi- 
dates, by 139,280 votes out of 328,940 voters. 
The 19th of the same month he was appointed 
Minister of the Navy and the Colonies, on the 
formation of M. Thiers' s first Cabinet. He sig- 
nalised the few earliest months of his administra- 
tion by considerable reductions in the expense of 
his department; but in June, 1872, an official 
announcement was made that the building of iron- 
clads, armed -with new steel guns, was going on as 
usual. The Admiral has spoken several times in 
the National Assembly with much sailorly frank- 



326 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

ness and sense, but only on questions relating to 
his department. He voted in favour of the 
preliminaries of peace, the abrogation of the laws 
of exile, the validation of the election of the 
Orleans princes, the customs treaty, and the return 
ot *the Parliament to Paris. Voted against the 
Government on the temporal power question. 

Although the more autocratic of the two ser- 
vices, the French navy has always been more 
liberal in politics than the army. This comes of 
naval officers being a better read and more thought- 
ful body of men ; and also from the fact that 
Courts have never acted so generously by sailors 
as by soldiers : whence bitterness, and a tendency 
amongst naval officers to side preferably with the 
popular feeling in the nation. It should be said, 
too, that political questions necessarily fail to ex- 
cite much interest in the minds of men who spend 
two-thirds of their lives on distant seas. Whilst 
far from home, sailors think much of their country, 
very little of its government ; and as they are seldom 
called upon to quell a rebellion, or to aid in assist- 
ing this or that adventurer to climb into power, 
they live tolerably exempt from party passions, 



ADMIRAL POTHUAU. 327 

and never entertain tliat spiteful hatred for de- 
mocracy wliicli is one of tlie most hopelessly in- 
eradicable prejudices in the army. More than one 
young midshipman bred in Catholicism and Legiti- 
mist principles, comes back to his not very edified 
family with an ill-concealed admiration for the 
principles of '89. He is not less Catholic, for 
sailors are never free-thinkers ; but he prefers 
France herself to all the dynasties in the world, 
and has the bluff courage to say so. Admiral 
Pothuau is a politician of this sort. 

He was an Orleanist from gratitude ; he served 
the Empire without liking that regime any more 
than the rest of the navy did ; but his politics are 
above all French, and if there were many members 
in the Assembly professing the same stolid un- 
canting patriotism as he, France might sail confi- 
dently ahead without needing to fear rocks. It is 
another instance, by the way, of that singular and 
irrational disbelief in the competency of naval men 
to fill any but nautical posts, that Admiral Pothuau' s 
name should never have been mentioned in con- 
nection with either the Presidency or Vice-Presi- 
dency. Yet if MacMahon, Faidherbe, or d'Aumale 



328 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

are considered eligible candidates, then wliy not 
Pothuau, wlio is the intellectual superior of at 
least two of these gentlemen, and the equal in 
statesmanship, science, and courage of ah three. 
The objections that militate against a soldier- 
President would not apply to a sailor, for sailors 
have never been notorious for coiijps d'etat. 
At all events, as he does not aspire to the Presi- 
dential chair, Admiral Pothuau would make as 
suitable a Vice-President as any whose names have 
been put forward. 



M. LOIJIS BLAIsTC. 

SUPPOSING a Parisian bourgeois to have gone 
to sleep in 1848 and to awake now, he would 
certainly ask to go to sleep again on learning that 
M. Louis Blanc was accounted a moderate Repub- 
lican. It would sound very hideous to such a 
man to hear that there were a class of Repub- 
licans more immoderate than M. Louis Blanc. 
" For what could any proletarian ask," might he 
say, " that this enthusiastic paradoxist was not 
prepared to grant ? He was for turning all society 
upside down ; nay, for shaving it away clean. He 
wanted to sink individualism — to give each work- 
man as much as another ; that is, to give clever 
A. no more than unskilful B. He installed a 
herd of ragamuffins on the scarlet benches of the 
Luxembourg Palace, where the Noailles, Broglies, 
and Montalemberts had sat, and over which Chan 
cellor Pasquier had presided augustly, and he 



330 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

dubbed these persons 'tbe peers of labour!' A 
little man, forsootb, whom 200,000 vagabonds in 
blouses and tatters had set out to acclaim, one 1 7th 
of March, to the consternation of all householding 
folk. Paris was within an ace of having him for 
Dictator, and Paris means France. Louis Blanc 
holding the sceptre of Saint-Louis, and perhaps 
calling himself Louis XIX., just to show peaceful 
men that a Republican has as much right as a 
Bourbon to tack a numeral to his name ! What 
next ? And you call him a moderate Repub- 
lican ! " 

So might a typical bourgeois of 1848 express 
himself. M. Louis Blanc is perhaps the only man 
in the world to think that he has not changed, and 
possibly he is in the right. It is not unlikely that 
he may be at heart the same enthusiast as he 
always was. If in power, he might try again to 
do what he nearly did in 1848 ; assuredly he has 
never recanted an opinion once advocated. Only 
mankind, which judges by externals, will set him 
down as a moderate Republican, because his hair 
has greyed, because he has a coating of English 
varnish on him, and because, though first on the 



M. LOUIS BLANC. 331 

list of members for Paris, lie talks as urbanely and 
academically as if lie were member for Orleans. 
For that matter, though, his talk never smacked 
of the gutter. He was none of your rasping 
orators, who could jump on a kerbstone and bawl 
gammon to the million ; encircling a lamp-post 
with one arm, and sawing the air with the other. 
He weighed his words as if they cost him 
two sous apiece, but distributed them liberally 
nevertheless, being generous with his money. A 
singular man at best, for he loved Robespierre, who 
would not have loved him. Then he loved 
Rousseau ; but Rousseau would have thought it 
odd that a man Avho objected to individualism 
should pay five francs every day in 1848 for his 
individual dinner, and print the fact as a proof of 
his abstemiousness. But here M. Blanc might 
answer with some astonishment that one does not 
dine well for five francs. Yes ; but what of those 
workmen who were to live in common fraternally : 
would they be able to afford five francs ? " But those 
were toilers with the hand," would urge M. Louis 
Blanc, " whereas I am a worker with the brain : " 
" Un travailleur de la pensee." Yes ; but how 



332 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

draw the line, and why draw it at all ? Is not 
one member as worthy as another ? Why per- 
petuate the degrading distinction which would 
subject the hands to the head ? There should be 
no aristocracies, least of all an anatomical aris- 
tocracy, in a free Republic. If an incapable work- 
man for making bad tables is entitled to earn as 
much as a clever workman for making good ones, 
then obviously a stupid author writing dull books 
may claim as much as an illustrious writer publish- 
ing master works. And the same rule is applicable 
universally. To do M. Blanc justice, he would not 
have been the man to recede from the conse- 
quences of his theories as applied to himself ; but 
it would have greatly shocked him to see MM. 
Thiers, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo walking to 
some national pay office, and being remunerated 
for their labours on the same scale as the poets who 
indite puff advertisements. This inconsistency 
paints the man. He is a thinker — sometimes a 
dreamer, but no man of action. 

Jean Joseph Louis Blanc was born at Madrid in 
or about the year 1811. His father was Inspector 
General of Finance to King Joseph Bonaparte, 



M. LOUIS BLANC. 333 

and a gentleman of fair descent, wliose ancestors 
had settled at Rouergue. His grandfather had 
been imprisoned and guillotined during the Reign 
of Terror. His mother was a lady of the noble 
house of Pozzo di Borgo. Brought to France at 
the fall of the Empire, he studied at the College 
of Rodez, and in 1830, when he had finished his 
education, was an accomplished scholar. 

Of high birth, and having nothing but a small 
allowance from his uncle, M. Ferri Pisani, he was 
forced by the straitened circumstances of his 
parents to earn his living first as a mathematical 
tutor, and then as a lawyer's clerk. Meanwhile, 
however, M. de Flaugergue, an ex-President of 
the Chamber of Deputies and a friend of his 
family, began to teach him politics ; and there is 
a tradition that he was nearly lost in the diplo- 
matic service, but saved himself by a sharp answer 
to the Duchess de Dino, who, thinking him a 
child from his extreme smallness, had laughingly 
advised him to cut his teeth before applying to 
Talleyrand for an attacheship. In 1832 M. Louis 
Blanc accepted the place of private tutor to the 
son of M. Hallette, a manufacturer of Arras \ and, 



334 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

having passed two years of his life in that 
modest capacity, awoke semi-famous one morn- 
ing after winning a prize for two poems and 
an essay from the Academy of Arras. Ke was 
then about twenty-three, and came to Paris to try 
his fortunes in journalism. A sound knowledge of 
history, an inkling of philosophy, and a style free 
from all vulgarisms, were his chief merits as a 
wiiter, and he was, of course, as ardent in the 
cause of reform as most young journalists of that 
time who had to fight their way in the world. An 
incident occurred in 1839 which crowned the 
reputation he had acquired in the course of five 
years' unremitting press labour. Having pub- 
lished, on the 15th of August (Fete Napoleon), in 
the Revue du Frogres, of which he was editor, an 
eulogistic review of the " Id^es Napoleoniennes," he 
was waylaid at night, as he was returning to his 
lodgings in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, brutally 
beaten, and left for dead on the pavement. This 
dastardly assault, the results of which kept M. 
Blanc several weeks in bed, was attributed to the 
police. It was said that Government wished to 
get rid of a writer who was becoming highly 



M. LOUIS BLANC. 



335 



obnoxious ; and M. Blanc benefited greatly by the 
halo of martyrdom whicb this disagreeable episode 
threw over him. He now set to work to pro- 
pound, in his Revue, all the socialist theories 
which were subsequently advanced in his book, 
" L' Organisation du Travail." On many points he 
was overtly communistical, and his whole doctrine 
was based on the generous but chimerical supposi- 
tion that men could be got to sink the promptings 
of individual interest, and to labour unselfishly 
one for another. He would never admit that by 
suppressing individualism he Avould be removing 
all inducements to self-perfection. Men are not 
angels. They require to be stimulated to action 
by the prospects of personal advantage ; and, 
although the sentiment lying at the root of this 
egotism may have been in its origin a poor one, 
it has become ennobled now that emulation has 
confessedly produced all that is great, good, and 
worth having in life. The State is bound to see 
that every child is educated, fed sufficiently, and 
kept as far as possible from the contagion of bad 
example ; and it is bound to provide for those 
who are disabled by sickness from earning their 



336 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

bread ; but more than this cannot be expected. 
It is good that life should remain a contest in 
which toil and energy carry off the prizes ; and it 
is good that sluggards should pay for their indo- 
lence by a sacrifice of comforts which are the 
reward of hard work, M. Louis Blanc was almost 
equally visionary in his views of history, as in 
those he entertained of political economy. He 
published in 1841, "L'Histoire de Dix Ans," 
and in 1847, "L'Histoire de la Revolution 
Fran9aise," both of which enjoyed a wonderful 
success, and are unimpeachable as literary produc- 
tions. As histories, however, they are not alto- 
gether trustworthy, for M. Louis Blanc can see 
things only through his own glasses. The first of 
the two books — " Histoire de Dix Ans " — was a 
violent attack on the first ten years of Louis 
Philippe's reign ; but as the author gave the 
m^onarchy of July no credit for the good it actu- 
ally did, he cannot be accepted as a competent 
judge of the good it left undone. It is not fair to 
judge statesmen only by their failures, and to take 
no account of their intentions. The last six j^ears 
of the Orleans monarchy passed miserably, because 



M. LOUIS BLANC. 337 

of M. Guizot's obstinacy in running counter to 
national impulses, and of liis infatuation in think- 
ing himself a necessary man, and endeavouring to 
retain his hold of power by packing the Legislature 
with members holding Government appointments, 
and, consequently, not independent. But the 
period from 1830 to 1842 was marked by a 
sincere attempt to found constitutional govern- 
ment, and the men who strove to" this end were 
neither feeble nor unpatriotic. No doubt blunders 
were committed, and Louis Philippe's reign, re- 
viewed in the aggregate, was not a success ; but 
M. Louis Blanc was not justified in assuming that 
the men of July were withholding from France 
Republican institutions for which all the nation 
was sighing. The popularity, however, of M. 
Louis Blanc among the working classes was so 
great, that he was named a member of the Pro- 
visional Government immediately after the revo- 
lution of 1848. It was upon his motion that 
capital punishment was abolished for political 
offences, and he ventilated many noble fancies, but 
he was not on very easy terms with his colleagues. 
On the 17th of March, a mob of two hundred 



338 MEN. OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

thousand Socialists clamoured to give him 
authority over them ; and many millions of 
Frenchmen were almost scared out of their wits 
at the prospect of his elevation. Less than two 
months afterwards (May 15th), he was nearly 
trampled to death in a riot, and afterwards nar- 
rowly escaped being killed by some National 
Guards, from whose fury he was rescued with the 
opportune help of M. de Larochejaquelein and 
M. Francis Arago, given at considerable peril to 
themselves. Hunted down by the very Kevolution 
he had helped so much to bring about, it is 
pleasant to reflect that M. Louis Blanc, when 
flying before his enemies during a night of terrible 
danger to him (August 25-26), was concealed in 
the house of M. D'Aragon, a political adversary, 
who enabled him to gain the frontiers of Belgium, 
whence he passed to England and safety. Of 
M. Blanc's residence in England there is no need 
to speak. No foreigner has ever received a 
warmer welcome, or deserved it more. On the 
25th of October, 1865, Jie was married at 
Brifditon to Miss Christina Groh. While M. Louis 

o 

Blanc lived among us, the French nation had 



M. LOUIS BLANC. 339 

not yet sufficiently recovered from tlie memories 
of '93 to be anxious for a Republic ; and it must 
be said that both by his writings and his speeches 
M. Louis Blanc is chargeable with not a little of 
the bourgeois terror which prevented Republican 
ideas from taking root in 1848. That he has made 
amends by his high-principled attitude through- 
out his long exile during the Empire none will 
deny ; but the fact remains that an unwise friend 
is often more injurious to the cause he serves than 
an open foe. 

M. Louis Blanc has not taken so prominent a 
part as might have been expected in the politics 
of the Third Republic. He returned to Paris 
only on the 8th of September, 1870, when public 
opinion still hoped something from the inter- 
vention of the neutral Powers. He was then 
pressed by many of his old friends to go back to 
London as ambassador, in order that his fluent 
tongue, and the esteem in which he was held by 
the Liberal party in England, might create some 
active sympathy in the minds of Mr. Gladstone 
and his colleagues ; and a little more than a fort- 
night after his arrival in France, this delicate 



340 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

mission was officially offered to him by the 
Government of National Defence. The complete 
investment of Paris by the Germans, however, and 
the refusal of the Prussian staff to grant him a 
safe conduct, put an end to a project which would 
hardly have been attended by success. M. Louis 
Slanc refused to take any part in the insurrec- 
tionary movement of the 31st of October, although 
his name was placed, without his consent, on the 
list of the " Committee of Public Safety." On the 
8th of February, 1872, he was elected representa- 
tive of the Seine (first out of forty-three candi- 
dates), by 216,471 votes. He voted for the con- 
tinuance of the war a outrance when such a 
policy would have been suicide. His utterances 
on the outbreak of the Commune were slightly 
ambiguous, and he now supports M. Thiers from 
fear of the Monarchists, though he is understood 
to favour a Federalisation of France on the Swiss 
system, and to object to the Presidential office 
altogether. He is deservedly respected in his 
party, for he is a believer in what has been jocu- 
larly termed the Kepublic by Divine Right ; and 
during the Empire refused to compound with his 



M. LOUIS BLANC. 



conscience by swearing tlie oath of allegiance, 
required before he could sit in the Chamber. His 
most famous declaration of principles on this sub- 
ject (" Letter to a Committee of the Eighth 
Circumscription of the Seine, September 12 th, 
1869") may be cited as an illustration of the 
virtues which distinguish the Republican section 
to which he belongs, and of the defects which 
hinder this section from developing useful states- 
men. In their blind attachment to the outAvard 
symbols of Republicanism, M. Louis Blanc and his 
friends will not see that Government can only be 
carried on by a large amount of practical conces- 
sion, which need not imply surrender of principle. 
They are imbued with theories which they believe 
to be sound ; they have honest intentions, and 
are convinced that if their system could have fair 
play, universal happiness would be the result. 
But they do not make allowance for those human 
prejudices which bind men to old traditions, and 
which disincline them to be made happy against 
their will ; and they evince a rather childish 
objection to seeing happiness conferred by agencies 
other than their own. In debate they often 



342 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

allude witli envy to tlie freedom of England ; but 
it is in vain for them to adduce England's 
example if they continue to reject her experience. 
England is free because her reformers have never, 
in their hour of triumphj dissociated party inte- 
rests from those of the nation — taking the nation, 
not in its restricted sense of a numerical majority, 
but as meaning the whole community, antagonists 
as well as friends. One could not wish to any 
country a more conscientious body of politicians 
than those of whom M. Louis Blanc is a type. 
They are upright and good men, who have testified 
to the sincerity of their convictions in the most 
simple and grandest way — that is, by suffering for 
them. But so long as they regard themselves as 
apostles of a system which men must be forced to 
endure instead of taught to love, they will lend a 
point to the witticism that a Republic will only be 
possible in France when there are no Republicans 
left. 



M. yiCTOE HUGO. 

COON after the restoration of Louis XVIII., 
a very young French nobleman, of good 
descent, began to distinguish himself in the world 
of letters. He was handsome, graceful, loyal, im- 
passioned ; and he soon became the favourite 
Court poet. He compared the talkative, dinner- 
loving king, and his commonplace kinsfolk to all 
the host of heaven, in language of such strong 
music that it moves the hearts of thousands to 
this day. He created that sacred and beautiful 
myth which transfigured the dull spectre of Bour- 
bon royalty in its latter days, and revived and 
sanctified it. Louis treated him with something 
less than the common ingratitude of princes ; and 
gave the poet, who had raised him in the eyes of 
his subjects from a kitchen to Olympus, a pension 
something larger than the wages of his scullion, 
something less than those of his cook. The 



344 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

amount of Victor Hugo's pension, for having lifted 
up a tlirone to human hearts, was two pounds six 
shillings and one penny a week. 

The childhood of the gifted and stately boy, 
thus taught the bounties of a crown so early, had 
been romantic, and was passed in wandering. His 
education had been desultory, and often inter- 
rupted. He was a son of extremely incongruous 
parents. His father was a poor gentleman of 
Lorraine, whose parchments of nobnity were dated 
in 1531, and who had acquired personal distinction 
in the. wars of the First Empire. He joined the 
armies of Napoleon as a volunteer ; entered the 
service of Joseph Bonaparte, and rose, as brave men 
did rise in those days, to the rank of general ; and 
held high commands in Spain and Italy. He was 
one of those thoughtless persons who are called 
free-thinkers in religion, a rough-and-ready man, 
of such light vanities that even the heavy hand of 
Time could not steady them ; and having perhaps 
known a parson who displeased him, the old war- 
rior, who would not have gone into a guard-room 
without saluting, left directions that the customary 
prayer should not be read over his grave, Victor 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 



345 



Hugo's mother was a heroine of La Vendde, a 
friend of Madame Boncliamp and Madame de la 
Eochejaquelein, in whose inspiriting company she 
had been hunted through the Bocage. He was born 
on the 26th of February, 1802, at Besan9on, 
formerly the capital of Franche Comte ; and those 
who care to follow the sparkling stream of fancy 
to its source may read the history of that old 
frontier fortress not unprofitably. 

The writings of Victor Hugo are often influenced 
by the traditions of his birthplace, and by those 
conflicting opinions which he derived from a de- 
vout Eoyalist mother and a successful soldier of 
the great revolution, who saw no benefit in clergy. 
His cosmopolitan sympathies may be traced to 
travels and circumstances of his boyhood. He had 
been carried half over Europe before he was eight 
years old, and his ears must have been opened in 
the first dawn of consciousness to kind words in 
many dialects. He passed the third and fourth 
years of his life in Paris ; and was then taken to 
Avellino, in Calabria, where his father was governor, 
and engaged in the dramatic business of pursuing 
the famous brigand Fra Diavolo, who was in full 



346 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

exercise of a profession considered lionourable 
beyond the Alps. Thence he was conveyed to 
Florence, Rome, Naples, and back to Paris in 
1809. His studies began at the old convent of 
the Feuillantines, under private directions from 
the proscribed general Lahorie. He spent his 
holidays with his mother and Mademoiselle Tou- 
cher, a young lady whom he afterwards married, 
and who loved him all her long life through. He 
had already learnt to read Tacitus when his tutor 
was betrayed, imprisoned, and put to death by the 
Imperial Government ; and the feelings natural to 
an ardent, generous lad, at the judicial murder of 
this gallant officer, possibly inspired him with that 
fervour for the Royalist cause which flamed out in 
a birthday ode for Henry of Bordeaux. 

At nine years of age he was removed to Spain, 
where General Hugo commanded an important dis- 
trict ; and he passed a year at the seminary of 
nobles under a southern sun. But education in 
Spain was then worse, if it possibly could be, 
than it is now. The professors who set him les- 
sons probably taught a little dog-Latin, which they 
could hardly construe themselves, and instructed 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 347 

liim in tlie art of eating garlic with peas and 
bacon. They knew nothing more ; the students, 
once renowned throughout the world, had sunk 
into utter sloth and worthlessness ever since 
science and scholarship had departed with the 
alchymists of Granada. So, as Victor Hugo be- 
gan to write verses of promise at the age of ten, 
his father forwarded him again to Paris ; and for 
a short while he returned to the convent of the 
Feuillantines. But stormy times were approach- 
ing. Napoleon fell, and rose again for a hundred 
days, during which General Hugo, who held 
Thionville against the allies, abruptly determined 
that his son should be prepared to enter at 
the Polytechnic School, and learn to handle a 
sword, as the most useful implement yet known in 
this world. 

His father might as well have tried to change a 
nightingale into a hawk. The boy could do 
nothing so well as poetry, which came to him 
from Nature, as a voice comes to the song-bird 
instead of a hooked beak and strong claws. At 
fourteen he wrote the tragedy of Irtamine, and 
two lyrics, " Riche at Pauvre" and " La Cana- 



348 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

dienne." The tragedy is not fine, the lyrics are 
not pretty. He was tuning his harp, and the first 
notes were discordant. 

In 1817 he contended for the annual prize of 
the Academy ; and astonished that dignified body 
by an " Essay on the Advantages of Study," so 
superior to the papers of all other competitors that 
they peremptorily refused to believe it could have 
been composed by a lad of fifteen, and withheld 
from him the reward he had won. He brought 
his baptismal register to bear on their understand- 
ings with the usual effect. The dignified body 
declined to be convinced. 

From 1819 to 1822 he competed at the floral 
games of Toulouse, and was thrice proclaimed 
Master of the Revels. His prize odes were " Les 
Yierges de "Verdun," " Le Retablissement de la 
Statue de Henri IV.," and "Moise sur le Nil." 
They are as well written as some other prize odes, 
which is not saying a great deal for them, and 
more would be too much. They contain immature 
or borrowed thoughts in lines which do not flow 
smoothly, and are often redundant ; but that por- 
tion of the public which judges rather from success 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 349 

than merit was eager to praise if not to read them. 
The sacred fire was really lit in his mind by the 
"Meditations" of Lamartine, and in 1822 ap- 
peared the first volume of his " Odes et Ballades." 
They were so orthodox and monarchical, yet so 
charming, that princesses of the blood, prompted 
by classical confessors, compared him to Orpheus 
and Apollo. Chateaubriand called him " the sub- 
lime child ;" and he obtained his pension by an 
act of generosity that might have been thought 
alone sufficient to ruin his rising fortune. He 
wrote a letter offering an asylum in his lodgings 
to an enemy of the Government. His lodgings 
must have been small. Therefore, when the letter 
was intercepted and laid before the King in the 
routine way, his Majesty, a man of large size, 
astonished at the inconvenience to which the poet 
had exposed himself, unexpectedly observed, "Yoici 
un noble jeune homme ! Je lui donne la premiere 
pension vacante." Means and reputation being 
thus assured to him, he was permitted to get 
married when just out of his teens. His wife was 
five years younger. 

Tiioy were modest means ; but envy has found 



3SO MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

something to cavil at in the source of an income 
which has been hkened to alms. It has been said 
with well-feigned scorn that Victor Hugo, having 
received part of a sum allotted by the State for 
the encouragement of letters, which are the light 
and joy of every age, thereby forfeited his right 
of free authorship, and tacitly renounced his duty 
as a Frenchman, It has been gravely argued that 
he had henceforth no liberty to move tongue or 
pen against the madness of tyranny, however 
shocking, or the corruption of courtiers, however 
base. There will always be persons quick to show 
their own folly, and who are full of words without 
reason. The dull taunt flung at Victor Hugo has 
often been chronicled in the sad records of litera- 
ture, and it might be well for those who repeat it 
to consider whether public salaries are a just pay- 
ment for labour done, or Avhether they are only 
given as hush-money, which binds their receiver, 
however worthy of his hire, to be a safe accom- 
plice in all kinds of official iniquity rather than 
an upright citizen. If this is the theory of State 
rewards for public service, the less honest men 
have to do with them the better, for they cannot 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 351 

be touclied without infamy. The prevailing im- 
pression in England and other constitutional 
countries is that a public servant who has earned 
any share of j)ublic money in return for his labour 
should never declare himself personally opposed to 
the minister through whose hands it passed to 
him in the ordinary course of business. It is a 
mischievous notion, which degrades the market 
price of toil into a bribe ; and upon this principle 
a general who had saved his nation might be called 
upon to resign a Blenheim or a Strathfioldsaye, 
unless he connived at its invasion and conquest. 

The errors of Charles X., his narrow-minded 
bigotry, his dreary obstinacy, and complete want 
of common sense, brought Liberalism into fashion ; 
and the impressionable mind of Victor Hugo was 
carried away by the strength of ideas which had 
seized upon all the intellect of France. Indeed, 
when the gorgeous phantoms of youth had been 
dispersed beneath the daylight of experience — when 
the fond recollection of his mother's dreams was 
fading from his mind, a man of Victor Hugo's 
clear intelligence could have seen little to revere in 
Charles or his predecessor. Divine right was 



352 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

loudly arrogated for tliem by their more unthink- 
ing adherents, but their title to it was by no 
means indisputable ; for two equal rights, the one 
nullifying the other, cannot exist together. Henry 
IV., the first Bourbon, had been anointed King of 
France in 1589, and his descendants could only 
claim the throne as his successors. But Napoleon 
had been consecrated by the Pope himself in 1804; 
and if the sacred oil with which the Supreme 
Pontiff had sanctified the power of that rebel 
captain could confer divine right upon his family, 
what became of the divine right of the Bourbons ? 
It was evident that they only held the same 
position towards the heirs of Napoleon as Ahaziah 
and Jehoram occupied towards the heirs of Jehu, 
the Bonapartes having all the advantages of a 
later consecration. 

Charles possessed none of those qualities of 
mind or of person which set such doubts at rest. 
He was a pedant in his knoAvledge of ceremonials, 
heraldry, and cosmetics, but he had studied nothing 
else ; his appearance and gait were not unlike 
those of a goose. In earlier times he would have 
been driven out of the way by some strong-wiUed 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 353 

mayor of the palace, wlio would have governed 
under his name while he hunted and told his 
breviary, a prisoner at large ; for he was a sove- 
reign whom no information could teach the 
right way, and no remonstrance turn from the 
wrong one. He reminded a close observer of 
nothing better than a rusty weathercock on a 
church steeple, which cannot obey the winds ; a 
guide high placed, but useless, to which none 
looked for counsel. There was a mocking poj)u- 
lace beneath, who saw the antiquated thing in 
that fierce glare which beats on all which is 
exalted. They saw it, read of it, found out that 
it was of worthless metal, and that even the gild- 
ing which had once deceived them as to its value 
was chipped and tarnished. It had, perhaps, they 
thought, never been anything better than the 
lacquered resemblance of a barn-door fowl, and 
now the lacquer was worn off it was less than 
that. Pirst they laughed at it, then they scoffed 
at it, then they grew angry with it. " Is this the 
fit ruler of a mighty nation, thou poet leader of our 
thought? Can he ride to battle with us, our 
captain and our chief ? What has he ever said of 

A A 



354 ^lEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Avise, or done of good ? Wliat is there of great- 
ness or of worth in him ? He has passed his 
youth in feasting, now he fasts and shoots tame 
birds by turns ! He hath put out our glory, 
silenced our orators, banished learning, forbidden 
speech, and fettered liberty. His hand, which 
looks so frail and wrinlded, is red with blood ; 
within it is a terrible sceptre too heavy for him 
to wield : now it topples over on this side, now on 
that, and smites us with heavy blows, while the 
old man nods upon his tottering throne. Make 
no more hymns for him, w© cannot sing them." 
Two pounds six and a penny a week could find 
no answer to this appeal. 

The largest mind in France changed very 
slowly, and it was some time before Victor 
Hugo was seen to waver in his allegiance to 
his mother's creed. The mental struggle through 
which he passed may be easily imagined. The 
Bourbon King, though silly, was not unkind, 
and had offered to double his pension. Many 
chivalrous men and beautiful ladies, devoted by 
the accident of birth to the royal cause, had been 
among his earliest friends and admirers. Still he 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 355 

glided gradually, perhaps involuntarily, into the 
ranks of opposition. He gave up classical meta- 
phors for romance ; wrote two novels, " Hans 
D'Islande," and " Bug- Jargal " (1823), and a 
second volume of "Odes et Ballades" (1826), which 
were bought up as fast as they could be printed. 
He founded the Cenacle Club, of which St. Beuve, 
Boulanger, ^nd the two Deschamps were members. 
" They propounded," says the critic Moreau, " the 
doctrine that nobody should be respected who was 
more than eighteen years of age," and they 
started a newspaper called La Muse Frangaise, con- 
ducted by Victor Hugo, to supj)ort their opinions. 
None but those who lived in the Parisian literary 
world half a century since could now understand 
the bitterness with which discussion raged between 
old and young authors at this time. In 1827 
Victor Hugo published his drama of Cromwell, 
written in open contempt of Aristotle and Racine ; 
and in an elaborate preface to this work he main- 
tained that everything in nature is also in art ; 
that dramatic writing should exhibit the sublime 
and the grotesque side by side, and give expression 
to the living spirit of the period it illustrates. 



356 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

Tlie play was not meant for tlie stage, and was 
not performed ; but as a new experiment in dra- 
matic writing it was enthusiastically praised and 
fanatically condemned. In 1828 appeared " Les 
Orientales," a collection of odes ricli in colour and 
imagery, poor in thought; in 1829, " Le Dernier 
Jour d'un Condamn^," a powerful tale, remarkable 
for its subtle analysis of passion. • 

Up to this time Victor Hugo was still a 
Royalist, though possibly rather of sentiment than 
conviction. He composed an ode on the death of 
the Duke de Berri, and condoled with Chateau- 
briand on his fall from power. His works, ever 
since" the gloomy romance of "Hans D'Islande " 
had captivated the imagination of French youth, 
sold with such rapidity, that rival publishers con- 
tended for them ; and Victor Hugo lived in a 
charming house,* surrounded by trees and gardens, 
the centre of a brilliant society, which included 
Dumas, Alfred de Vigny, Mignet, Armand Carel, 
and M. Thiers. Madame Hugo was a delightful 



* 49, Eue Notre Dame des Champs. He did not remove to his 
better known residence at No. 6, Place Royale, where he lived ia 
princely state, till 1830. 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 357 

hostess. Her company spent their winter evenings 
in conversation and reading poetry, or drawing, 
Victor Hugo being an accomplished artist. In 
summer they went gipsying towards Montrouge, 
and over the plains of Vanvres, very merrily. 

The interest excited by Cromwell induced Victor 
Hugo to prepare a play for the stage, and it occa- 
sioned his -first serious breach with authority. 
He wrote Marion de VOrnie, and the censorship 
immediately forbade its representation. Victor 
Hugo appealed to the King, but his Majesty only 
smiled, and said, " O poet ! " which meant that 
the interests against the piece were too strong 
for either of them. Marion de I'Orme was 
followed by Hernani, and the Academy made 
its wail heard at the Tuileries to suppress that 
work also ; but Charles X., who was inclined to 
amusement, answered that " he should claim no 
right but a place in the pit to see it performed." 
Ministerial opposition was not, however, the only 
difficulty which stood menacingly in the way of its 
representation. Mademoiselle Mars, then queen of 
the French stage, pronounced an adverse criticism 
upon it, and attempted to overawe the young 



35 8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

dramatist, who looked shy and timid Avhen he 
came to read his piece at the foyer of the theatre. 
As soon, therefore, as he came to the verse in the 
third act, which is spoken by Dona Sol — • 

" Moi, je snis fiUe noble, et de sang jalouse 
Trop pour la concubine, et tiop peu pour I'epouse," — 

a voice interrupted him with the word " favorite." 
Victor Hugo raised his head and looked towards 
the actress, who was munching sweetmeats, and 
kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Thinking his 
ears had deceived him, he began to read the lines 
a second time, — " Trop pour la concubine — " 

" Favorite," cried the same voice. 

Again he repeated the word, and again Made- 
moiselle Mars corrected him. 

" Is it you, madame," said Victor Hugo, with a 
bow, " who are doing me the honour to interrupt 
me?" 

" Yes," replied the actress, coolly. 

"And you redly think the word 'concubine' 
should be replaced by the word ' favorite ? ' " 

" / am sure of it ; such a word has never yet 
been spoken on the stage." 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 359 

" Then," replied Victor Hugo, " it will be spoken 
^oiv for tlie first time." 

She also objected to the word "lion," and 
wanted to change it for the word "lord;" but 
Victor Hugo made good his points, by threaten- 
ing to take the part av/ay from her if she did 
not mend her manners ; and so, on the 26 th of 
February (the poet's birthday), 1830, Hernani 
was played at the Theatre rran9ais amidst a riot 
which surpassed all other theatrical riots before 
or since. Victor Hugo's friends beat down and 
out-shouted his opponents. In the following year 
Marion de VOrme was also performed, and, in spite 
or because of its morality, obtained an immense 
success. 

In 1831 a brilliant romance called "Notre 
Dame" took the public by surprise and enchant- 
ment. The curious archaeological knowledge dis- 
played in it ; the startling contrast of grace and 
ugliness, simplicity and cunning ; the original cha- 
racters of Claude Frollo, Quasimodo, and Esmeralda ; 
the seductive defects of style in which a comj)licated 
plot is developed, made it one of the most fascinat- 
ing prose narratives in existence. It was eagerly 



36o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

read, translated, and pirated wherever books are 
sold. The admiration it excited had not time to 
cool before it was succeeded by some exquisite 
lyrics entitled " Les Feuilles d'Automne," which 
are full of sweet dreams and wondrous harmonies. 

But the censorship had not yet done with Victor 
Hugo. Le Roi s amuse came out on the 22nd 
November, 1832, and was removed from the play 
bills next day by Ministerial order. This arbitrary 
act had the usual effect of arbitrary acts on 
thoughtful men. It induced Victor Hugo to ques- 
tion the authority by which it had been done. He 
denied the Minister's right to suppress a work of 
imagination without valid cause. He brought a 
lawsuit against him, and appealed that his deci- 
sion was null and void as a violation of the con- 
stitution. He pleaded his own case in a speech 
which is a triumph of eloquence and logic ; but he 
could not shake official conceit into admitting 
that an excellency had made a blunder. 

Year after year his lavish genius continued to 
pour forth its treasures, with only rare signs of 
momentary exhaustion. " Lucr'ece Borgia " and 
"Marie Stuart" (1833), "Etude sur Mirabeau," 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 361 

*' Literature et Philosopliie," and " Le Rhin " 
(1834), " Les Chants du Crepuscule" and " An- 
gelo" (1835), "Les Yoix Interieures" (1837), 
"Buy Bias" (1838), "Les Rayons et les Ombres" 
(1840), "Les Burgraves" (1843), bear witness to 
the fertility of his resources and amazing industry. 
It has been often said that Victor Hugo has both 
used and abused the power of contrast ; that he 
shows us hostile passions in deadly struggle, and 
opposing feelings constantly at war, while the 
transition from pathos to mirth is too abrupt. If 
such objections are valid, they would apply equally 
to the tragedies of Shakspeare and the comedies 
of Moliere. How far an author may be justified 
for having distorted the facts of history is a ques- 
tion upon which critics are divided. It is enough 
for the drama to teach moral truths in an attrac- 
tive form ; it need not be concerned about vera- 
cious records. This is the elastic argument used 
by the defence. On the other side it may be sub- 
mitted that truth needs not to go masked ; and that 
if historical personages are mentioned, they should 
act as it is known they have acted. Imaginary 
characters will serve the purposes of a dramatist as 



362 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

well as real ones. Perhaps we love to be deceived, 
and Yictor Hugo would not have been so popular 
a story-teller bad be been a more faitbful cbro- 
nicler. Yet it becomes great men ratber to set good 
precedents tban to follow bad ones. Dickens and 
Leech introduced pure wit into literature and art 
in England. Victor Hugo might have invented 
truthful historical plays. He was content to remain 
the chief of the romantic school. He made the very 
frippery of the Middle Ages fashionable. It passed 
from poetry to painting and decorative furniture, 
and thence into the ideas of the French people. 
He substituted liveliness and movement for the 
stiff classical plays which had received the solemn 
approval of court and clergy in wig and gown. 
This revolt against the old dramatic rules has been 
carried to excess by his imitators. They have 
confounded in one common disdain the essential 
conditions of art with the arbitrary customs of a 
particular reign, and their hatred for convention- 
alities has led them to deny the pre-eminence of 
the beautiful, to rehabilitate ugliness, physical and 
moral, and to create monsters. The French drama 
has thus become materialised and demoralised : but 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 363 

Victor Hugo's school has marked a distinct literary 
epoch, which has produced many masters of their 
craft and many bold delineators of the most hidden 
feelings of our nature. 

In 1841 the unrivalled fame of Victor Hugo 
at last forced open the doors of the Academy, and 
he took his place among those influential persons 
who call themselves the Forty Immortals. He 
made them rather a patronising speech on the 
occasion, and talked party politics to them, as 
things they could better understand than letters. 
M. de Salvandy replied, however, with more wit 
than could have been expected ; and the new 
academician, having attained the summit of literary 
ambition, set out upon his travels to revisit Spain, 
whence the tragic death of his daughter Leopoldine, 
Madame Vaquerie, suddenly recalled him. In 
1845 he was made a peer of France by Louis 
Philippe, but his countrymen have refused to dis- 
figure an illustrious name by a title to which he 
might give honour, but from which he could 
derive none. The rare prize of political ascen- 
dancy won at the pen's point awaited him, when 
the revolution of 1848 gave a new course to his 
desires 



364 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

He seemed at first to fear tlie consequences of 
tlie change, and attached himself to that reaction- 
ary electoral committee which met in the Rue de 
Poictiers. He was returned to the Constituent 
Assembly as member for the city of Paris by the 
partial election of the 4th of June, which brought 
out pell-mell from the same urn the names of 
Proudhon, Changarnier, Goudchaux, Thiers, Caus- 
sidiere, Charles La Grange, and placed Victor Hugo 
himself between M. P. Leroux and Prince Louis 
Napoleon. His votes were at this time far more 
conservative than democratic. He twice declined to 
sanction proceedings against M. Louis Blanc and 
M. Caussidiere. He demanded that the penalty of 
death should be abolished. He refused to declare 
that General Cavaignac had deserved well of his 
country. He rejected the draft of a new constitu- 
tion ; and joined his voice on more than one 
occasion with that of the two extreme parties in 
the State. Acting with the Conservatives, he sup- 
ported the decree of the 28th July against the 
clubs, and opposed the principles on which were 
based the droit dub travail, progressive taxation, 
and the abolition of military substitutes. He 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 365 

pronounced against M. Gravy's amendments by 
which the President might be revoked, and which 
required that the Constitution should be sanc- 
tioned by the people. After the election of the 
10th of December, he voted uniformly with that 
fraction of the Chamber which named itself the 
Party of Order. 

His attitude in the Legislative Assembly was 
very different. He was elected tenth among 
twenty-eight candidates for the Department of the 
Seine ; and converted, as was supposed, by M. 
Emile de Girardin to the platform of the social 
and democratic Republicans, he became one of the 
chiefs and orators of the Left. The affairs of Rome, 
popular education, the newspaper stamp, and 
guarantee laws (1850), the limitation of universal 
suffrage, and the proposed revision of the Con- 
stitution (1851), supplied him with subjects for 
parliamentary oratory. He never spoke without 
effect, but he had not the coolness of temper 
necessary for prolonged debate. The passionate 
vehemence of his language ; his personal attacks 
and wordy duels with Montalembert, which lasted 
three whole years ; his awful denunciations of the 



366 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

President, wliom lie lield up to contempt and 
abhorrence, drew on liis fresli Republicanism some 
cruel retorts from the majority. They quoted his 
writings against his speeches, as though an author 
was personally responsible for the sentiments 
which he puts into the mouth of the divers cha- 
racters in his fictions, and was bound at the same 
time to endorse the opinions of Hamlet and 
Othello, of Lear and Bottom, of Ariel and Caliban. 
His conversion was also regarded with some sus- 
picion by his new friends, and he found himself 
in the same position as St. Paul at Damascus. 
They were amazed and half afraid of him. But 
he increased the more in strength, and confounded 
his enemies with those of the revolution. In 1848 
he had set up a daily paper called L' Evenement, 
which had faithfully followed him in all his vacil- 
lations. It had been prosecuted, condemned, sup- 
pressed, resuscitated (under the title of L'Avene- 
ment) in the customary manner ; and the Govern- 
ment continued still to look upon it with an 
(Attentive eye. Among the many attacks made 
upon this journal was one against his son, who had 
insisted on the abolition of capital punishment 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 367 

with a veliemence which arose from over-hot 
notions of fihal duty, or a want of practice in 
writing leading articles under the watchful inspec- 
tion of hostile censors. Victor Hugo defended 
his son in person, and his speech on the occasion 
enlisted all the better feelings of his countrymen. 

The coup cCetat found him in determined oppo- 
sition to the Government all along the line. In 
Parliament, in society, in the press, he never 
ceased calling on men and gods for redress, and 
trying stoutly himself to get it. So mighty an 
antagonist could hardly expect to bide in peace ; for 
it is the first necessity of a Power which feels itself 
insecure to knock down or banish its opponents. 
Victor Hugo was at once proscribed and driven 
into exile. In vain he tried to rouse the easy 
sybarites of Paris and the mystified good folk of 
prosperous provinces into some effective form of 
resistance against a tyrant whom he compared to 
Nero and Tom Thumb. Finding that he only 
preached to the winds, he compressed his indig- 
nation into the more durable form of a satire 
called " Napoleon le Petit," and threw it into the 
usurper's camp like a bombshell. It was shot 



368 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

from Brussels in 1852, but lie was tlien too 
nervous and irritated to show how terrible a wea- 
pon he could wield from a distance ; and it was 
not till the following year, when he published a 
volume of poetry called " Les Chatiments," of 
which every line breathes living fire, that he 
branded his enemy with indelible disgrace. Both 
of these books were excluded from France by a 
lynx-eyed police, and were diligently perused by all 
Frenchmen. 

When expelled from the Second Empire, Victor 
Hugo retired to Jersey, but got brief rest there, 
not finding the British dominions nearly so free as 
they had been described to him. He was forced to 
depart from that island in 1855, together with all 
those refugees who had signed a protest against 
the expulsion of three of their number. He then 
went to Guernsey, where he wrote and thought 
more calmly, submitting to the inevitable, as a 
rock submits to it when rent by the thunder. 
He continued, however, to find that consolation 
which always comes from interesting studies and 
constant employment undisturbed by sordid cares ; 
while his pleasant house on the seaside became a 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 369 

place of pilgrimage for liero-worsliippers of all 
nations, and the homage of his companions in 
exile was unfailing, sincere, and even ostentatious 
in its demonstrativeness. Among them were many- 
eminent persons, whose respect was no unworthy 
tribute ; and still he could send book after book 
to the press with undiminished prodigality. He 
had always been a quick writer. His first novel 
was written for a wager in a fortnight, and even 
" Notre Dame " was only the work of six months, 
being composed, with a single day's holiday, in a 
study where large fires were always burning, and 
where the windows were kept constantly wide 
open. It was his boast that he never failed to 
keep time with a publisher, and the activity of his 
brain was still as great as ever. " Les Contem- 
plations," printed in Paris (1856), went through 
several editions, and conciliated all who could 
be touched by tenderness, sorrow, and misfor- 
tune. They read like the memoirs of a soul, 
and describe the recollections of a poet, the aspi- 
rations of a philosopher, under the title of "Autre- 
fois" and " Aujourdhui." The style is supple ; 
there are few artifices of language in it ; and not- 

B B 



370 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC, 

withstanding tlie frequent recurrence to one 
domestic sorrow — liis daugliter's deatli — tliey will 
seldom be read without sympatli}^ and approval. 
A grander poetical conception, called "La Legends 
des Slides," formed the literary event of 1859. It 
is a collection of poems remarkable for brightness 
of thought and nervous diction, but wanting in 
melody. It had long been announced as the 
fragment of a trilogy to be completed in two other 
parts, named " Satan " and " Dieu." 

Victor Hugo dedicated this, the maturest fruit 
of his labour, to France, but refused to return 
thither Avlien the Emperor proclaimed a general 
amnesty on the loth of August, immediately 
after its publication. Associating himself with MM. 
Edgar Quinet, Louis Blanc, and Charras, he replied 
to the imperial pardon by an indignant manifesto ; 
and none of those able men appear to have under- 
stood that by so doing they abandoned the country 
they loved so well to less worthy masters, and that 
while they were indulging their resentment, they 
deprived her of the services she had a right to 
demand from them. A patriot whose hfe may be 
uselessly sacrificed, or who may be deprived of 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 371 

liberty by a despot, can and ought to save bimself 
by fliglit from a blind and stupid persecution. 
History will not deny him its esteem for having 
evinced prudence in time of danger. But when 
the peril is past, great men owe something more 
than the distant echo of their voices to the land of 
their birth. They should give to those who suffer 
from bad laws the protection of their presence, and 
help them with hand and arm to bear their 
burdens or to throw them off. Caution is good ; 
but a morose sulkiness, which palsies strength into 
inactivity, is not justifiable or even honest. 

However vexatious and tyrannical the Second 
Empire may have been, more than thirty millions 
of people were obliged to endure it, because 
they had no means of escape. The strongest- 
hearted of them all should have showed at least 
equal fortitude, and supported his part of the 
national suffering to make it lighter for the rest. 

Nothing but an error in judgment or want of 
civil courage can be pleaded in extenuation of this 
neglect of duty. All religions, all philosophies, have 
forbidden the demonstration of impotent anger, and 
declared that the patient endurance of evil which 



372 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

has no present remedy is one of tlie highest virtues. 
Nearly every great man who has made himself 
heard against a prevailing faction has been banished 
from his country ; nearly every good man has 
returned to it at the first summons, if he could do 
so safely. The arrests and high-handed measures 
of 1851 could not have been repeated in 1859 ; 
both the person and freedom of Victor Hugo were 
notoriously secure. When, therefore. Napoleon 
III. was ready to govern well, no French patriot 
should have been influenced by personal con- 
siderations to oppose good government. Victor 
Hugo could not at that time have overthrown 
the Emperor's authority v/ithout ijaore bloodshed 
and public trouble than the result could be worth ; 
for the name of a ruler signifies little, and the 
only question worth a thought is the manner of 
.his rule. It is certain that the presence of Victor 
Hugo and other illustrious men in Paris would 
have acted as a check on many evil things ; and 
they had no right to stand aloof when they were 
needed. It was something unworthy and ridicu- 
lous to sling accusations against Csesar from a 
marine villa or a snug lodging abroad, and rail 



M. VICTOR HUGO, 373 

at him for taking venal or stupid people into 
office, when all the worth and talent of their 
country refused to serve it. Had Victor Hugo 
stood forward, as he was morally bound to do, the 
fatal day of Sadowa might have never happened, 
the disastrous Ministry of M. Emile OUivier would 
have been impossible, and France could have been 
spared the overwhelming ruin which fell upon her 
when absolutely abandoned to the counsels and 
government of the feeblest mediocrity. 

It can scarcely be remembered without regret, 
that when his country most needed his help Victor 
Hugo was more occupied with literature than with 
politics. Each of his works now represented a 
moderate fortune, and no writer has ever received a 
more splendid acknowledgment of his labours. The 
publication of a book under the warranty of his 
name had become a Europe"kn event ; and in 18G2 
his fine romance of " Les Mise'rables" appeared 
simultaneously at Paris, Brussels, London, New 
York, Madrid, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Turin. A 
hundred and fifty thousand copies of it were sold 
in one year, and the profits realised from its sale 
must have been enormous. In I860 appeared 



374 ^lEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

" Les Cliansons des Eiies et des Bois," a collection 
of trifles in wliicli the grotesque predominates. 
Like a poetical Paganini, lie seems to have been 
anxious to play on a single string of his lyre, and 
to perform a piece rather odd than melodious. In 
1866 "Les Travailleurs de la Mer" came out. It 
is a picturesque idyll in which a meagre story is 
drowned in a phosphoric sea of fancies. In 1869 
appeared "L'Homme qui Kit," which can hardly 
be pronounced anything but a failure, and is un- 
derstood to have occasioned the bankruptcy of its 
publishers. 

On the 15 th of August in the same year Victor 
Hugo again rejected, with still more haughtiness 
and unreason than before, the last amnesty it was 
in the power of Napoleon III. to offer him. Nor 
was this only the extent of his determination or 
obstinacy. His friend, M. Felix Pyat, pressed him 
earnestly to return, and offered to accompany him. 
He answered in the well-known line, "S'il n'en 
reste qu'un, je serai celui-la." He opposed the 
plebiscitum so passionately, that he was again 
prosecuted by the law officers of the Empire for 
exciting hatred and contempt against the Govern- 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 375 

ment ; and it was not till France liad been 
ravaged by fire and sword that tlie best beloved 
of ber sons came back to mourn over her ruins. 

Victor Hugo was received with enthusiasm by 
the Eevolutionary Government of the 4th of 
September, 187®, and immediately issued a pro- 
clamation to the German nation, inviting them to 
declare a Eepublic and join hands with France. 
On the 1 0th of October he pronounced against the 
municipal elections ; on the insurrectionary out- 
break in Paris, three weeks afterwards, his name 
appeared on the Committee of PubHc Safety, but 
the next day he protested it had been used with- 
out his authority ; and he refused to offer himself 
as a candidate at the general election of the 
mayors of Paris which took place on the 5 th of 
November. On the 8th of February, 1871, he was 
chosen deputy for the Department of the Seine in 
the National Assembly, by 214,169 votes, his name 
being second on a list of forty-three candidates. At 
the sitting of the 1st of March he spoke against 
the peace, and voted against any preliminary 
negotiations with the Germans ; and, after a 
stormy debate, resigned his seat on the 8 th of the 



376 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

same montli. Witliin a brief space lie lost liis 
favourite son, wlio died suddenly, and brought his 
corpse to Paris on the same day (1 8th March) when 
the Communist revolt commenced. He remained 
in the capital during that sad period, endea- 
voured to save the column in the Place Vendome 
from destruction, and did his best to calm the 
madness of the rioters. When he saw that all 
his efforts were vain, he went to Belgium ; and 
having while there offered an asylum to the 
soldiers of the Commune, he was expelled by a 
royal warrant, and, after being nearly torn to 
pieces by a Brussels mob, he took refuge in 
London. As soon as the trial of the Communist 
chiefs was over he returned to Paris, and inter- 
ceded with M. Thiers for the pardon of Henri 
Rochefort, but without effect. Presented by the 
Radical press as candidate for the city of Paris at 
the election of the 7th of January, 1872, he 
refused to accept the " Mandat Imperatif " which 
his constituents desired to impose upon him, but 
offered to accept a "Mandat Contractuel," which he 
defined very eloquently. Only 95,900 votes were 
recorded for him, and he was defeated. Most of 



M. VICTOR HUGO. ill 

his plays were revived in 1872, and brouglit large 
receipts to crowded theatres. He also published a 
volume of poetry, entitled " L'Annee Terrible," and 
founded a cheap democratic newspaper (16 th May, 
1872), called Le Peuple Souverain. 

Victor Hugo occupies in France a position 
something like that of Mr. Carlyle in England. 
It has been said that he is rather a great child 
than a great man, and that he has the caprice, the 
generosity, and the rashness of a boy. It has been 
also the fashion of late to add that he should 
never have mingled in the ignoble strife of politics. 
He was, it is urged, infinitely above all Emperors, 
Presidents, and Ministers — a seer, not a deputy. 
Those who seriously maintain such an opinion 
must have a mean and false idea of the functions 
of government. If the wisest men of a nation 
refuse to serve it, they must leave the supreme 
control of its affairs to persons who are less capable 
of directing them. The fortune and happiness of 
millions may be ruined because no intelligence 
competent to save them will take part in the busi- 
ness of administration. This strange idea seems 
to have been propagated, and widely propagated, 



378 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

by dull men, wlio knew of tlieir dulness, and 
desired to find an excuse for remaining in autho- 
rity by asserting the astounding proposition that 
authority should be duU. That notion has always 
been a popular delusion in England, but it was 
never so in France, and those who entertain it any- 
where are only worth enough time and attention 
to give them a short answer. Every one is bound 
to serve his countrymen who has the intellect to 
serve them well. The quality called patriotism is 
not much in favour with modern thinkers ; and a 
philosopher may feel as kindly towards the Japa- 
nese as towards his own people. But every society 
must have laws and a government suited to its 
peculiar state of civilization for the general tran- 
quillity and for the general good. It is a duty of 
the highest wisdom to administer and uphold those 
laws when they are beneficent ; to correct, or endea- 
vour to amend them, when they are not so. The 
idea of country, though not necessarily territorial, 
requires that men should give their consideration 
and their labours to the society of which they form 
part, and should instruct their kind in the lan- 
guage which they can speak or write to the best 



M. VICTOR HUGO. y^^ 



purpose. A Frencliman cannot make good laws 
for the Siamese. He cannot speak their tongue 
or inform them intelligibly. He knows little of 
their wants and nothing of their wishes. A French- 
man, therefore, if not bound to France, which is 
a mere geographical expression, is bound to the 
French people, whose requirements he understands, 
and whose very accent is impressed as deeply 
upon his heart as on his lips. He must render 
the service asked of him, if he is fit to do so ; and, 
when called to the Council, he cannot answer that 
it is so wise and great that he can only spin 
fictions and dream dreams. 

Whether Victor Hugo has employed his ten 
talents well is a more rational subject of inquiry. 
He was the laureate of the Bourbon restoration. 
He was a peer of the constitutional monarchy, 
which overthrew the power he had celebrated in 
the poems of his youth. He was then a moderate 
republican, then a democratic socialist. He says, 
" On m'appelle apostat ; je me croix apotre." An 
Englishman would not speak of himself in such 
words, but they may, nevertheless, be true words. 
The position of France has changed as well as he ; 



38o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC, 

and lie may have lield different opinions at dif- 
ferent times, not dishonestly, but as the natural 
result of thought informed by circumstance. 

" Toujours la meme tige avec une autre fleur," 
he says. Political consistency can be preserved 
only by that respectable stupidity which refuses to 
admit any evidence of changes, however clear to 
eye and ear. A sheet of paper may have been 
once white, and it was well to call it white ; but a 
sheet of paper blurred and blotted is not white, 
though consistency would fain have it so, because it 
is the same sheet of paper. Consistency in politics 
really means that a statesman shall take no account 
of current events. Eevolution against an esta- 
blished monarchy is only to be advocated in an 
extreme case ; and loyalty was a proper sentiment 
in 1823, when the Duke of Bordeaux could not 
have been set aside without a civil war. When 
he had been formally deprived of the succession, 
in 1830, there was no reason why the government 
of Louis Philippe should not have been supported. 
It was based on a distinct expression of the 
national will. It was liberal in its professions, at 
least \ it had many claims on the support of any 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 381 

man wlio was Avilling to accept tlie decision of the 
majority of his countrymen as to the form of 
government under which they purposed to live. 
But the manner in which Napoleon III. ascended 
the throne could not recommend itself to an up- 
right man ; and the way in which he exercised his 
authority, though showy and magnificent, was 
radically vicious. Victor Hugo said so, and he 
spoke truly. 

But, groans the scandal-monger and the eaves- 
dropper, " He is avaricious, grasping ; his life has 
not been always pure." Alas ! my friends, who 
among us is without sin ? We have stoned so 
many prophets, we had better venerate this 
one who is still among us. Let the reverent, 
almost idolizing love of his kindred and associates, 
the eye-witnesses of a noble and laborious life, be 
suffered to answer and set at rest malicious 
calumny. There is no magic in the name of wife 
or child or friend, to steal away one human heart ; 
and those who know us best must love or hate us 
most. It was no libertine who held one woman's 
soul in his imperial thraldom for eight-and -forty 
springs and winters. It was no miser who suffered 



382 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

little cliildren by tlie score to come to him, and 
sat down in the midst of tliem, and fed and 
clothed and taught them, as Victor Hugo did while 
he was a proscribed and banished man. It was no 
niggard who opened wide his doors to all who were 
oppressed and exiled ; or, at any time between his 
courtly youth and thoughtful age, beneath the frown 
of power. He has done what he thought right and 
merciful to all men. When he invited the refugees 
of the Commune to his house in Belgiuni, he 
certainly paid a fine compliment to the established 
laws of that small and comfortable country. His 
act was misunderstood, or misinterpreted, but It 
was, nevertheless, a fine and noble act, which 
should have served as a protest against the blood- 
thirstiness of the dominant party at Versailles. It 
will ever remain a blot on the government of 
Belgium, that it suffered Victor Hugo's house to 
be surrounded, and permitted him to be hooted by 
a mob drunk with " faro " and ignorance: but con- 
stitutional countries are seldom free from the 
indiscreet weakness of making haste to alter those 
laws to which they owe their existence and free- 



M. VICTOR HUGO. 383 



dom, at the first panic excited by any company of 
sly persons. 

There remains little more to be said, and that 
little may be told briefly. After the fall of the 
Empire, Victor Hugo was again elected to take 
part in the councils of France, and again he has 
abandoned her to politicians who can in no sense 
be considered as his eauals. Such conduct appears 
to lookers-on more capricious than reasonable, and 
although it is probable that there may be a satis- 
factory explanation of it, none has yet appeared. 
However, at the age of seventy-one, "Victor Hugo 
is still a man in that robust health which may be 
preserved to the extreme limits of human existence 
by simple food, agreeable occupations, and the 
world's esteem. Poet, artist, novellist, dramatist, 
orator, statesman, letter- writer, essayist, editor, 
advocate, and song-maker ! He has done all forms 
of brain-work excellently well. Whatever worth 
and genius can accomplish is still possible to 
Victor Hugo, and he may yet take part in the 
regeneration of his country. If he has suffered 
something from the misrepresentation of fools, and 
something from the ingratitude of the people he 



384 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. 

has loved with such passionate fervour, he must 
find consolation in his own gallant words, now 
echoing everywhere through the world like the 
notes of a clarion with a silver sound, " God suffers 
not the precious fruit of sorrow to grow upon a 
branch too weak to bear it." 



T^IE END 



LIST OF BOOKS 



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The Books in this List, unless otherwise specified, are 
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4©- All of our Putlieations mailed, post-paid, ca Mceipt of prIce."=®H 



LIST OIP BOOICS 

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^e?. (S"^^ Chestnut Street, 

PHILADELPHIA. 



ALEXANDER WILSON AND CHARLES LUCIEN 
BONAPARTE. 

AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY; or, The Nattjeai- History of 
THE Birds of the United States. Illustrated with Plates 
engraved and colored from original Drawings taken from 
Nature. By Alexander Wilson. With a life of the author, 
by George Ord, F.R.S. With Continuation, by Charles 
Lttcien Bonaparte (Prince of Musignano). 3 vols., imperial 
8vo., with a folio volume of carefully colored plates embracing 
nearly 400 figures of birds mostly life size. Elegantly bound in 
cloth, extra gilt top, ^97.00; half Turkey morocco, gilt edges, 
$110.00. 
The Same, complete in 4 vols., 3 of letter-press and 1 quarto plates. 

Cloth, extra gilt top, S95.00; half Turkey, gilt edges, 8100.00. 
The Same, complete in 5 vols., 3 of letter-press and 2 vols, quarto 
of plates. Cloth, extra, gilt top, §97.00 ; half Turkey, gilt edges, 
$110.00. 
A' nev/ and magnificent edition of this world-renowned work, printed 
from new stereotype plates, on the finest laid paper, and bound in the 
best manner. The plates are printed Irom ihe original plates, engraved 
by Lawson, "the first ornithological engraver of our age," and are care- 
fully colored, after the author's own copies. The superiority of this work 
for accuracy of description and naturalness of drawing, has long been 
acknowledged. Daniel Webster speaks of it in the highest terms, say- 
ing that of the.salt water birds, mentioned in Wilson, "he had shot every 
one, and compared them with his delineations and descriptions, and in 
EVERY CASE found them perfectly accurate to nature." And the 
London Quarterly Beview characterized it as " an admiirable work, unequal- 
ed by any publicadon in the old world, for accurate delineations and just 
description." A momenfs comparison of this work with any other on the 
same subject, will convince the most skeptical of its great superiority. One 
of its chief values being, that the birds are mostly of the size of 111c, enabling 
any one to easily recognize them in nature; and, at the low price it is now 
offered, should be in every public and private library of any pretentions. 

" With an enthusiasm never excelled, this extraordinary man penetrated 
throvigh the vast territories of the United States, undeterred by forests or 
swamps, for the sole purpose of describing the nativebirds."— iorciirow^ftam. 
Architecture of Birds. 

"Wilson contemplated nature as she really is, not as she is represented in 
books: he sought her in her sanctuaries;— the shore, the mountain, the 
forest, were alternately his study, and there he drank the pure stream of 
knowledge at the fountain head."— Swainson. 

" With regard to the literary merit of his American Ornithology, passages 
occur in the prefaces and descriptions which, for elegance of language, grace- 
ful ease, and graphic power, can scarcely be surpassed.' '—Encyclopedia JBrit- 
tanica, Vol. AAX 



PORTER & COATES PUBLICATIONS. 



EDWARD GIBBON. 

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. With 

Notes by Rev. H. H. Milman. To which is added a complete 

Index. 6 vols, crown 8vo, with a steel portrait. Cloth, extra, 

per set, $9.00; sheep, library style, per set, 610.50; half calf, gilt, 

per set, $18.00. 

"Gibbon, the architect of a bridge over the dark gulf which separates 

ancient frona modern times, whose vivid genius has tinged with brilliant 

colors the greatest historical work in existence."— ^2i«on. 

DAVID HUME. 

THE HISTORY OP ENGLAND, FROM THE INVASION OF 
JULIUS CJESAR TO THE ABDICATION OF JAMES THE 
SECOND, 1688. A new Edition, with the author's last correc- 
tions and improvements. To which is prefixed a short account 
of his life, written by himself. With steel portrait. 6 vols, 
crown Svo, cloth, extra, per set, $9.00; sheep, library style, per 
set, $10.50; half calf, gilt, per set, $18.00. 
" Considered as a calm and philosophic narrative, the history of Hume 
will remain as a standard model for every future age. His just and profound 
reflections, the inimitable clearness and impartiality with which he has 
summed up the arguments on both sides on the most momentous questions 
which have agitated England, as well as the general simplicity, uniform 
clearness, and occasional pathos of his story, must for ever command the 
admiration of mankind. In vain we are told that he is often inaccurate, 
sometimes partial ; in vain are successive attacks published on detached 
parts of his narrative, by party zeal or antiquarian research : his reputation 
is undiminished: successive editions issuing from the press attest the con- 
tinued sale of his work ; and it continues its majestic course through the sea 
of time, like a mighty three-decker, which never even condescends to 
notice the javelins darted at its sides, from the hostile canoes which from 
time to time seek to impede its piogiess,"— Alison's £ssays. 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 

THE niSTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE ACCESSION OF 
JAMES II. Standard Edition, with an Index. 5 vols, crown 
Svo, with a steel portrait. Cloth, extra, per set, $7.50 ; sheep, 
library style, per set, $8.75 ; half calf, gilt, sJlS.OO. 
"With the rest of the world, we come with our homage to Macaulay. 
Steady, strong and uniform, the stream of his thought continues to flow: 
and, without effort, or without outward sign of it, he keeps his place as the 
first living (185G) writer of English prose. * * * On whatever side we 
look at this book, whether the style of it or the matter of it, is alike aston- 
ishing. The style is faultlessly luminous: every word is in its right place; 
every sentence is exquisitely balanced; the current never flags. Homer, 
according to the Roman poet, may be sometimes languid ; Mr. Macaulay is 
always bright, sparkling, attiactive."— Westminster Review, April, 1856. 

DUCHESS OF ORLEANS. 

MEMOIR OF THE DUCHESS OF ORLEANS. By the Maeqttess 

DE H , together with Biographical Souvenirs and Original 

Letters. Translated from the French, by Prof. G. H. De 
ScHtTBEET. One volume, with a portrait on steel, 12mo, pp. 
391. Jn Press. 
" The materials of this volume consist of a memoir by the Marquis de 
H .which is an interesting narrative of the varied and peculiar for- 
tunes of the subject, and a collection of souvenirs and original letters by 
Professor Schubert, of Germany, who was the family tutor of the Duchess 
of Orleans. The work derives not a little interest from the character of the 
Duchess, which was equally remarkable for loveliness and heroism, especi- 
ally during her troubled career after the abdication of Douis Philippe. The 
translation shows fidelity and considerable skill, and will be regarded as a 
valuable accession to biographical reading."— J2arpe?-'s Magazine. 



PORTER & COATES PUBLICATIONS, 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

WAVERLEY novels. Complete in 23 vols. Illustrated. Toned 
paper. Price per vol., Globe Edition: cloth, extra, $1.25; half 
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Waverley. Pirate. 

Guy Mannering. Fortunes of Nigel. 

Antiquary. . Peveril of the Peak 

Kob KoY. Quentin Durward. 

Black Dwarf and Old Mortality. St. Kouan's "Well. 

Heart of Mid-liothlan. Eedgauntlet. 

Bride of Lammernaoor, and A The Betrothed, and the Talisman. 
Legend of Montrose. Woodstock. 

Ivanhoe. Fair Maid of Perth. 

Monastery. Anne of Geierstein. 

Abbot. Count Kobert of Paris, and Castle 

ICenilworth. Dangerous, 

Chronicles of the Canongate, 

This is the best edition for the library or for general use published. Its 
convenient size, the extreme legibility of the type, which is larger than is 
used in any other edition, either English or American, its spirited illustra- 
tions, quality of the paper and binding, and the general execution of the 
presswork, must commend it at once to every one, 

TALES OF A GRANDFATHER. Uniform with the "Waverley 
Novels." Illustrated, 4 vols. Toned paper. Price per vol., 
Globe Edition : cloth extra, $1.25; half calf, gilt, $2.75. Standard 
Library Edition: cloth extra, gilt tops, bev. boards, IL50; half 
morocco, gilt tops, $3.00; half calf, gilt, $3.50. 
The only edition containing the Fourth Series, " Tales from French His- 
tory." 

IVANHOE. A Romance. Youth's Favorite Edition, Illustrated. 
Cro^yn 8vo. $1.50. 

LADY OP THE LAKE. With twenty-five engravings on wood, 
from designs by Birket Foster and John Gilbert. lOmo. Bev. 
boards, $1.50 ; half calf, gilt, $3.00 ; full Turkey mor, antique, §4.C0. 

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, with remarks upon his Wri- 
tings, by P'rancis Turner Palgrave ; an Essay on Scott, by David 
Masson, M.A., and Dryburgh Abbey ; aPoem, by Charles Swain, 
12mo, Illuminated cover, 30 cents. With fine portrait on steel, 
cloth, extra, 60 cents, 
" Kelates the events in the life of the illustrious novelist in an agreeable 
style, with an unpretending, but singularly acute, criticism of his writings."— 
New Ym-k Tribune. 

" A centennial offering of large worth. The biography is brief bit com- 
prehensive, while the remarks upon his writings which crop out every hero 
and there, are marked by great Judgment and keen appreciation."— PAiJa- 
delphia Inquirer. 

" One of the ablest reviews of Scott's life and works that has ever been 
written. It is very able and very just,"— iVew York Evening Mail. 

THE BEAUTIES OF WAVERLEY, Selections of the most 
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fine steel engravings. Elegantly printed on fine paper, and 
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One volume, crown 8vo, Cloth, full gilt, extra, $5,00 ; morocco, 
bevelled boards, antique, $8,00. 



PORTER & COATES PUBLICATIONS. 



RUFUS W. GRISWOLD, D.D. 

THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA. With a Survey of the 
Intellectual History, Condition, and Prospects of the Country. 
New edition, thoroughly revised and completed to the present 
time, with a supplementary Essay on the Present Intellectual 
Condition and Prospects of the Country. By Prof. John H. 
Dillingham, A.M. With seven portraits on steel and vignette 
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ability, and Icindness of tlie author."— William Cullen JSryant. 

"An important and interesting contribution to our national literature. 
The range of authors is very wide; the biographical notices full and inter- 
esting, I am surprised that the author has been able to collect so many 
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ation of the qualities of the writers, as well as I can iuage."— William M. 
Prescoit. the Historian. 

" Can be cordially recommended for its sterling qualities, and the hand- 
some style in which it has been gotten up by the publishers makes it par- 
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present that will be appreciated by the recipient."— J'AiiadeZp/iia Evening 
Telegraph. , 

'■Is really a desirable acquisition to any library, and, indeed, a library 
could scarcely be called complete without it."— Marshall (Mich.) Titnes. 

GEMS FROM THE AMERICAN POETS. With brief biographi- 
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60 cents ; illuminated sides, 00 cents ; Turkey mor., extra, $1.50. 

FREDERIC H. HEDGE, D.D. 

THE PROSE WRITERS OF GERMANY. With Introductions, 
Biographical Notices, and Translations. With six portraits on 
steel and engraved title. Imperial 8vo. Cloth, extra, gilt top, 
bevelled boards, $5.00; sheep, marbled edges, library style, 
$6.00; half calf, gilt, i-7.50; full Turkey morocco, $10.00. 

'•There is no book accessible to the English or American reader which 
can furnish so comprehensive and symmetrical a view of German literature 
to the unitiated : and those already conversant with some of the German 
classics will find here valuable and edifying extracts from works to which 
very few in this country can gain access."— I'rof. A. 2^. JPeabody, in JS^orth 
American JBeview. 

" It is universally recognised as one of the best collections of specimens of 
German literature in the English language. It has been prepared on the 
plan of giving a limited selection of authors, with large extracts from their 
works. The translations from the editor's own pen are singularly vigo- 
rous, and in the accomplishment of his task, he has had the co-operation of 
several American scholars."— A'eu) York Tribune. 

" A new and beautiful edition of a work of sterling merit. Compilations 
are good even in our own language, for so great is the multitude of books 
that few have leisure to read a tithe of them. But to the great stores of lit- 
erature in foreign tongues, only those skilled in them have access. The 
treasures of German literature are inaccessible to most American readers. 
It is, therefore, no common addition to our information and pleasure, to 
have put before us well selected passages of the best works of the most cele- 
brated German authors. This is done with the most excellent judgment in 
this volume. The reader of it will here form some acquaintance with the 
principal German classics, and that acquaintance he may improve by a 
turther perusal of those which he finds most to his taste. Enough, however, 
s given to furnish an ample specimen of the style and method of each 
writer. Many complete pieces are furnished. Among those to whom con- 
siderable space is accorded, are Kant, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, the 
8chlegels, Kichter, Heine ; with these are many others of celehtity."—Aee, 
J'hUadelphia. 



PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

THE POETS AND POETRY OP EUROPE. A New and Revised 
Edition, with the addition of 137 pages of entirely new matter, 
never before published, making it one of the most elegant and 
complete works extant. With Introduction, Biographical 
Notices, aad Translations, from the earliest period to the pres- 
ent time. By Prof. Henky Wadswokth Lokgfellow. Illus- 
trated with engravings on steel and engraved title. Imperial 
8vo. Cloth, extra gilt top, beveled boards, S6; sheep, marbled 
edges, library style, $7.50 ; half calf, gilt, $9: Turkey m.orocco, 
$12. 

" In all this there is great clearness and precision ; the details dear to the 
student of a particular literature or literary epoch, but, confusing to the 
average culture, are sacrificed to the fullness with which the principal and 
important features are brought out. Whenever it is possible, the oriticism 
is tounded upon the opinions of each writer's countrymen, and in all cases 
it appears to us that the best authorities are consulted; and one of the best 
Is Mr. liongfellow himself, who speaks his own mind only too sparingly. 
His work is often merely that of an editor, but he does it with that taste, 
sympathy and good sense, which his whole literary life embodies in such 
degree, that we feel anything else to be impossible with him, and gives it 
thus the finest value of original production. The labor involved in the 
preparation of such a volume as this, will by no means appear to the 
general reader It delights, and to whom we venture to suggest grateful con- 
sideration of the vast acquaintance with authors and authorities, the tacit 
service of comparison and selection implied by the abundance and the 
succinctness with which every topic is treated. We will not say that here is 
all the general reader need know of the poets and poetry of Europe, but we 
assure him that he cannot do better than possess himself of all the infor- 
mation here given, and that he could no where else find it so availably 
and so agreeably presented, and with so little that he need not know. 
To this new edition Mr. Longfellow has added a supplement of 137 
pages, devoted to such poets as have recently won distinction, and to the 
poets whom recent study has brought into notice anew. The poems in this 
supplement are marked by that greater fidelity and regard to the originals 
which no one has done half so much to urge upon translators as Mr. Long- 
fellow himself, in the high example of his ' Dante.' Here are his own ex- 
quisite translations from German, French, Italian, and Spanish ; here is one 
version, most sympathetically tender and spirited, by Mr. Lowell ; here is a 
part of Faust in Bayard Taylor's conscientious and admirable English ; here 
are some songs from Heine, by Leland ; here are Mrs. Wister's charming 
pieces from De Musset; here are Bryant's Specimens of modern Spanish 
poetry ; here are Kosetti's beautiful versions from the earliest Italian poets, 
and here are abundant extracts from the latest. The supplement, in fact, 
lays before the reader the freshest and best poetry of all Europe, and wor- 
thily completes the work. It is not easy to give a just idea of its merits and 
graces, but those who already know it will not need a lecture from us upon 
it, and to those who do not we can but heartily commend iX,"— Atlantic 
Monthly, January, 1871. 

" This edition has been revised and enlarged by the author, and contains 
his best touches and corrections to his labors. But they have stood the test 
of criticism. Their accuracy and felicity have been acknowledged by the 
best scholars in Europe. The attainments of Mr. Longfellow as a linguist 
have been recognized by those best qualified to judge them in each sphere 
of his labors. . . . In it is given, in a convenient form, a summary of the 
poetic literature of Europe which is not to be found elsewhere."— TAs Age, 
I'hUadclphia, 

"It is now a better book than ever, the Professor having added an ap- 
pendix and supplement, the latter dated 1870, containing a very precious 
list of newer poetical translations. . . . The supplement is very choice 
and interesting, and absolutely rejuvenates the work. Here we have speci- 
mens from Bayard Taylor's translation of Faust, not yet received in com- 
plete book form, a charming passage from King Kenc's Daughter, &c., &c. 
The whole volume is an acquisition to our letters, and to that disposition of 
literary curiosity, an honorable distinction of the American people, which 
has made such a diflacult work, so well done, necessary,"— T/is Evening 
Bulletin. I'hiladelphia, 



PORTER & COATES PUBLICATIONS. 



DEAN STANLEY. 

SERMONS PREACHED dwring his Tour in the East. With 
Notices of some of the Localities visited. Published by arrange- 
ment with the author. New edition. "With plan and diagram. 
12mo, cloth extra, $1.50. {In Press.) 

Dean Stanley's Sermons are famous, as finished specimens of pulpit ora- 
tory, and the fourteen comprised in this volume are pre-eminently charac- 
teristic of their distinguished author. They are specially interesting for the 
very graphic description of the various localities visited during the tour in 
the course of which they were delivered. 

" Three of these sermons were preached in Egypt, on the Nile, and in the 
great hall of the Temple of Karnak ; four were preached in Palestine, in 
the harbor of Jaffa, at Jacob's Well, at Nazareth, and by the Sea of Galilee ; 
three more were preached in Syria, on Mt. Harmon, in the Temple of Baal- 
bec, and under the cedars of Lebanon ; three were preached upon the Medi- 
terranean, with the fresh impressions of Ephesus, Patmos, and Malta, &c. 
These circumstances of composition and delivery would give interest even 
to ordinary discourses. But these are not ordinary. The thought is simple, 
but very free and very wide. It is not merely illustrative of the scenes and 
the history, but it is excellent counsel, both practical and spiritual, to the 
principal listeners."— iVori/i American Review for July, 1863. 



REV. TREADWELL WALDEN. 

THE HISTORY OF OUR ENGLISH BIBLE AND ITS SEVEN 
ANCESTORS. An Historical Plea for Revision. 16mo, tinted 
paper. Cloth extra, $1.25. 

" In itself a story of profound interest, the ripe and elegant scholarship of 
the author gives it many additional charms ; and it is specially welcome now, 
when our version of the Holy Book is to take another step forward, and as- 
sume that additional completeness necessary for a new &sq."— Christian 
Union (iJev. Henry WdrdJBeecher, Editor). 

" We cordially commend it to the attention of our students and ministers, 
as a summary of useful and highly interesting information, even if they do 
not agree with the author on every point."— United Presbyterian, Pittsburgh. 

" In this neatly printed little volume, Mr.Walden has gathered information 
concerning our English Bible, which everybody ought to possess, but which 
is not easy of access."— Oid School Presbyterian, St. Zouis. 

" The book is extremely interesting, and will not fail to carry fresh infor- 
mation to very many readers."— Watchman and Meflector {Baptist). 

"The work exhibits great research and scholarship, and is written in a clear 
and graceful stYls."— Lutheran Observer. 

" A very Christian and scholarly eSoTt."— Methodist Protestant, Baltimore. 

" An admirable popular account of the successive steps in the growth of the 
English version of the Bible, from the first attempt by Wickliffe down to the 
final revision in the reign of King J&mes."— Sunday-School Times. 



THOMAS A'KEMPIS. 

OF THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. Four books. New Edition, 
beautifully printed on toned paper. 18mo, cloth, extra, 53 cts. : 
cloth, extra, beveled boards, red edges, gilt stamp on side, 75 
cents: cloth, extra, beveled boards, gilt edges, gilt stamp on 
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calf, antique, $2.50. 



PORTER & COATES PUBLICATIONS. 



WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. 

COMPLETE WORKS. Dramatic and Poetical, witli tlie "Epistle 
Dedicatorie," and the Address prefixed to the edition of 1G23, a 
Sketch of the Life of tlie Poet, by Alexander Chalmers, 
A.M., and Glossarial and other Notes and References. Edited 
by Geokge Long Duyckink. With twelve full-page tinted 
Illustrations, designed by Nicholson, a superb ijortralt on 
steel, from the celebrated Droeshout picture, and beautiful 
engraved title, on steel. 976 pp. Imperial 8vo. Cloth, extra, 
gilt back, $3.75 ; sheep, library style, S4.o0. 

FINE EDITION OF THE ABOVE, on extra calendered paper, 
with the addition of a History of the Early Drama and Stage 
tQ the time of Shakspeare, a full and comprehensive Life, by 
J. Payne Collier, A.M., Shakspeare's Will, critical and his"- 
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beautiful engraved title on steel. Imperial 8vo. 1084 pages. 
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POEMS AND SONNETS. With a fine engraving on steel. 32mo. 
Cloth, 60 cts.; illuminated side, 90 cts.; Turkey morocco, 81.50. 

THOMAS PERCY, D.D., Bishop of Dromore. 

RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY: consisting of 
Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and other pieces of the earlier poets, 
with some of later date, not included in any other edition. 
To which is now added a Supplement of many Curious His- 
torical and Narrative Ballads, reprinted from i-are copies, 
with a copious glossary and notes. New edition, uniform v^-ith 
the above. 558 pp. Imperial 8vo. Two steel plates. Fine cloth, 
bev. bds., gilt, $3.75; sheep, library style, $4.50; full Turkey 
morocco, $10.00. 
"But, above all, I then first became acquainted with Bishop Percy's 

Eeliques of Ancient Poetry I remember well the spot where I 

read these volumes for the first time. It was beneatli a liuge plantanus 
tree, in the ruins of what liad beau intended for an old-fashioned arbor, in 
the garden I have mentioned. The samm jr day sped around so fast, that 
notwithstanding the sharp appetite ot thirteen, I lorgct the hour of din- 
ner, was sought for with anxiety, and was still lound entranced in my 
intellectual banquet. To read and ta remember was in this instance the 
same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my schoollcllows, and all who 
would hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop 
Percy. The first time I could scrape a few shillings together, which were 
not common occurrences with me, I bought unto myself a copy of these 
beloved volumes, nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or 
with half the enthusiasm."— J/fffioJrs of his early Life, by Sir Walter Scott 
prefixed to LockharVs Life of Scott. 

LORD BYRON. 

COMPLETE WORKS. Prose and Poetry. With five engravings 
on steel. Imp. 8vo. Sheep, library style, $4.50; Turkey mo- 
rocco, antique, $10.00. 
" If the finest poetry be that which leaves the deepest impression on the 
minds of its readers,— and this is not the worst test of its excellence,— Lord 
Byron, we think, must be allowed to take precedence of all his distinguished 
contemporaries. 'Words that breathe, and thoughts that burn,' are not 
merely ornaments, but the common staple of his poetry; and he is not in- 
spired or impressive only in some happy passages, hut t^irouirh the whole 
body and tissue of his composition."— Xord Jeffrey, Edinburgh Ueview. 

THE MORAL AND BEAUTIFUL IN THE POEMS OF LORD 
BYRON. Edited by Rev. Walter Colton. 32mo. Cloth, GO 
cts.; illuminated side, 90 cts.; Turkey morocco, $1.50. 



PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 



THOMAS HOOD. 

COMPLETE WORKS. Prose and Poetry. Illustrated. 5 vols., 
crown 8vo, tinted paper. Cloth, extra, per vol., $1.75; half calf, 
gilt, per vol., $3.50; half morocco, antique, per vol., $3.25. 

" This very good edition of a favorite author has the advantage of being 
lower in price and neater in appearance than any other yet published in 
this country."— r/ie Press, Philadelphia. 

POETICAL WORKS. 2 vols., crown 8vo, tinted paper. Cloth, extra, 
per vol., $1.75; half calf, gilt, per vol., $3.50; half morocco, gilt 
t6p, per vol., $3.50. 

SELECT POETICAL WORKS. With a fine engraving on steel. 
32mo. Cloth, 60 cents ; illuminated side, 90 cents ; Turkey mo- 
rocco, $1.50. 

" Hood's verse, whether serious or comic,— whether serene, like a cloud- 
less autumn evening, or sparkling with puns like a frosty January midnight 

xntix stars,— was ever pregnant with materials for thought Like 

every author distinguished for true comic humor, there was a deep vein of 
melancholy pathos running through his mirth; and even when his sun 
shone brightly, its light seemed often reflected as if only over the rim of a 
cloud.— J>. M, Moir, 

UP THE RHUSTE. Crown 8vo, tinted paper. Cloth, extra, per 
vol., $1.75; half calf, gilt, per vol., $3.50; half morocco, anticLue, 
per vol., $3.25. 

HOOD'S COMICALITIES. A Series of Comical Pictures from 
Hood. Containing 200 illustrations, by Thomas Hood. Fully 
equal to Leech's and Cruikshank's admirable drawings. Oblong 
quarto. Half morocco, extra, $4.00. 



JOHN MILTON. 

COMPLETE WORKS. Standard Edition. With a Life of the 
Author, by Rev. John Mitford. 2 vols., crown 8vo, laid and 
tinted paper, largest type, $4.00. Library edition, with engra- 
vings on steel, 1 vol., Svo, sheep, library style, $4.50; Turkey 
morocco, antique, $10.00. 

ROBERT BURNS. 

COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT. Elegantly illustrated with fifty 
engravings from drawings by Chapman. Engraved by Filmer. 
Beautifully printed by Ashmead, on the finest tinted plate 
paper. 4to, cloth extra, bev. boards, $4.50; Turkey morocco, 
antique, $9.00. 

This noblest poem of "the greatest poet that ever sprang from the bosom 
of the people" until the issue of this edition had never been detached from 
the collected works of Burns, to receive the adornments of art which have 
been so bountifully and lovingly bestowed on Gray's " Elegy," Goldsmith's 
"Deserted Village," Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," Thomson's "Seasons," 
and other kindred treasures of English verse. The poem itself is a classic, 
and the beauty and appropriateness of the illustrations to be found in this 
edition, place it far ahead of any other. 



PORTEE & COATES PUBLICATIONS. 



EDWARD, EARL OF DERBY. 

THE ILIAD OF HOMER RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BLANK 
VERSE. From the latest London edition, with all the author's 
latest revisions and corrections. Two vols, crown 8vo, on laid 
and tinted paper, gilt top, bev. boards, cloth extra, Si.OO. 

"It must equally be considered a splendid performance; and for the 
present we have no hesitation in saying that it is by far the best representa- 
tion of Homer's Iliad in the English language."— icwdon Times. 

" The merits of Lord Derby's translation may be summed up it one word ; 
it is eminently attractive; it is instinct with life; it may be read with fer- 
vent interest ; it is immeasurably nearer than Pope to the text of the origi- 
nal. . . . It will not only be read, but read over again and again 

.Lord Berby has given to England aversion far more closely allied to the 
original, and superior to any that has yet been attempted in the blank verse 
of our language."— i'dm&urs' Keview, 

" As often as we return from even the best of them (other translations) to 
the translation before us, we find ourselves in a purer atmosphere of taste. 
We find more spirit, more tact in avoiding either trivial or conceited 
phrases, and, altogether, a presence of merits, and an absence of defects, 
which continues, as we read, to lengthen more and more the distance be- 
tween Lord Derby and the foremost of his competitors."— iont?o?i Quarterly 
Meview. 

" "While the versification of Lord Derby is such as Pope himself would 
have admired, his Iliad is in all other essentials superior to that of kis great 
rival. It is the Iliad we would place in the hands of English readers as the 
truest counterpart of the original, the nearest existing approach to a repro- 
duction of that original's matchless feature."- iondon. Saturday Beview. 



REV. JOHN KEBLE. 

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR: Thoughts in verse for the Sundays 
and Holidays throughout the Year. 16mo, Cloth, red line, 
beautifully printed, $1.50; Turkey morocco, antique, gilt 
edges, $3.50. 

" In this volume old Herbert would have recognized a kindred spirit, and 
Walton would have gone on a pilgrimage to make acquaintance with the 
author."— iojidon Quarterly Hevieiv. 

" These and many other thoughts and feelings concerning the ' vision and 
the faculty divine,' when employed on divine subjects, have arisen in our 
hearts, on reading— which we have often done with delight— The Christian 
Year, so full of Christian poetry of the purest character. Mr. Keble is a 
poet whom Cowper himself would have loved; for in him jiiety inspires 
genius, and fancy and feeling are celestialized by religion. We peruse his 
book in a tone and temper of spirit similar to that which is breathed on us 
by some calm day in spring, when 

' Heaven and earth do make one imagery,' 
and all that imagery is serene and still,— cheerful in the main, yet with a 
touch and tinge of melancholy which makes all the blended bliss and beauty 
at once more endearing and profound. We should no more think of criti- 
cizing such poetry than criticizing the clear blue skies, the soft green earth, 
the 'liquid lapse' of an unpolluted stream, that 

' Doth make sweet music with the enamell'd stones. 
Giving a gentle kiss to every flower 
It overtaketh on its pilgrimage.' 
Beauty is there,— purity and peace: as we look and listen we partake of the 
universal calm, and feel in nature the presence of Him from whom it 
emanated."— Secreaiicms of Christopher North, {John Wilion). 



10 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 

MRS. ELIZABETH F. ELLET. 

PIONEER WOMEN OP THE WEST. One volume, 12mo, pp. 434. 
Illustrated, clotli extra, $1.50. 

The history of the wives and mothers who ventured Into the Western 
wilds, and bore their part in the struggles and labors of the early pioneers, 
is sketched in this work. The materials were collected from the records of 
private families, and the recollections of individuals who passed through 
the experiences of frontier and forest life. Descriptions of the domestic life 
and manners of the pioneers, and illustrative anecdotes, have been woven 
into the memoirs of prominent women, and notice has been taken of such 
political events as had an influence on the condition of the country. 

" The biographies contain fine descriptions, enlivened with anecdotes of 
the domestic life and manners of those pioneer matrons, and are worthy of 
a perusal."— rfte Watchman and Sejlector {Baptist). 

" This volume is devoted to the history of the wives and mothers who 
bore a part in the struggles of the early pioneers in the Western wilds. Mrs. 
Ellet is familiar with this branch of the American annals. She has given 
much lime to research on this subject. Her inquiries have been attended 
with remarkable success. Gathering a rich fund of local anecdote and 
tradition, furnished with interesting details by the descendants and the 
acquaintances of her subjects, and in many cases visiting the scenes of their 
adventures, she has obtained abundant materials for an attractive work, 
and has wrought them up with evident ability and good taste. Her volume, 
though full of interest to all classes of readers, is especially adapted for cir- 
culation at the Great 'We^V—Marpef's Magazine. 

THE QUEENS OF AMERICAN SOCIETY. With elegant steel 
Portraits of Mrs. John Hancock, Mrs. President Polk, Mrs. 
Senator Crittenden, Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont, Mrs. Henry 
J. Butterfleld, Madame Le Veit, Mrs. W. A. Cheatham, Mrs. 
James W. White, and Mrs. Coventy Waddell ; beautifully en- 
graved. 8vo, cloth extra, bev. boards, $3.00; French morocco, 
gilt, $4.50 ; Turkey morocco, extra, S7.00. 
In this volume Mrs. Ellet gives us sketches of prominent belles and lead- 
ers of fashion, from the early days of the Kepublic to the present time, and 
full space is also assigned to the ladies of our own day, who have been and 
are most conspicuous in our first social circles. Not only are the brilliant 
circles of fashion in the metropolis and larger cities illustrated, but those of 
the West and South. The customs in dress and entertainments, at different 
periods, have also been noted; and a marked line of distinction has been 
drawn between the ladies whose mental culture and refining influence have 
benefited the society in which they presided, and the vulgar parvenues who 
claim distinction merely on the score of wealth and lavish expenditure. 

*** This volume is adorned with original and exquisite steel engravings 
of portraits of the most distinguished leaders of " the ton" in New York, 
Boston, Philadelphia, &c. , ^ ^, , , ., .. , , 

"In literary and aesthetic character the work Is quite unexceptionable, 
and must prove highly acceptable."— Oft)\ Advocate, N. Y. 

" It is of course of special interest to women, and will doubtless occupy a 
prominent position among books."— JBostore Transcript. 

" Among the most popular books of the rapidly closing year, this volume 
of interesting biographies will take a first place. Mrs. Ellet has executed 
her somewhat delicate task with rare taste and ability."— Pftiia. Inquirer. 

"This royal volume contains sketches of nearly three hundred ladies who 
have been, or are now, recognized as leaders in social circles in different 
sections of our country. These ladies, it will be seen, from these honest and 
graceful portraitures of Mrs. Ellet, had substantial claims to their honored 
distinction in society. They were none of your shallow pretenders, of re- 
cent shoddyism, whose only worth is in the vulgar glitter of their money. 
The subjects of this volume are the flowers of the sex, and won their promi- 
nence in society by mental superiority, and the refinement of taste growing 
out of mental culture, as well as, in some instances, by a noble spirit of 
benevolence. The author savs: 'It is curious aud interesting to trace the 
noted families whose descendants have spread over the land, and parting 
with the aristocracy derived from ancient blood, have risen to individual 
distinction.' ., „ ^ • 

"This volume is a most interesting and valuable contribution to Ameri- 
can history. The work abounds with anecdotes and incidents, with descrip- 



PORTER & COATES PUBLICATIONS. 11 

tlons of changes in costume and dress, which give interest and historic 
value to the work. It b also adorned with fourteen original steel engrav- 
ings."— iMifteran Observer, Phila, 

" This is really a pleasing book, which only a woman could write. If it is 
Interesting to know the costume of an ancient Greek Lady, or to understand 
the arrangements of a Roman dwelling, or to revive the picture of Puritan 
or Cavalier, we cannot see why we should not be attracted by information 
in regard to the cues, and knee-buckles, and breakfasts, and dinners, and 
dancings, and, generally, the dress, manners, and habits of our Republican 
ancestors. Many incidents of family history are here gracefully preserved, 
which would otherwise soon have faded even from household tradition. 
Such collections of minute, and, to some apprehensions, trivial facts, exert 
a powerful, but unconscious influence on history itself, and at some distant 
day may, perhaps, afford material for the reflections of the philosopher. 
We are thankful for the industry which gathers and arranges these inci- 
dents in pleasing style, and hope the pictures of the dignified courtliness of 
our ancestors may have some effect in restraining and refining the manners 
of their children."— ^m. Quart. Ch. Meview, 

"The Queens of Ameeican- Societt, et Mes. Ellet.— This is a 
beautiful book, which should have a place upon every centre-table in the 
land. The self-imposed task of Mrs. Ellet was a difficult one, because some 
one of the ' queens^ might have been omitted, and the omission would have 
led to much of jealousy and ill-feeling. But so far as we can judge, the work 
has been well done. We have scattered through 458 pages a brilliant galaxy 
of female beauty and intelligence of which our young country may well be 
proud, from Mrs. Washington and the women of the Revolution, down to 
our own days, when 'shoddy' and 'petroleum' essay to fill the vacant 
niches. Mrs. Ellet portrays her characters with truly feminine gusto, and it 
is to her evidently a labor of love. She does not limit her descriptions to 
the intellectual attractions of her 'queens,' or even to the beauty of feature 
and grace of form with which God had endowed them, but delights to dwell 
upon the dresses and decorations which added to and aided their fascina- 
tions, both mental and physical. The volume is embellished by thirteen 
portraits, which bring before us the 'counterfeit presentments' of many 
who have been called away, and others who still shine as stars in our firma- 
ment."— Pfti to. Age. 



AGNES STRICKLAND. 

STORIES FROM HISTORY. 12mo, illustrated, cloth extra, black 
and gold. Price, $1.25. 

TRUE STORIES FROM ANCIENT HISTORY. Chronologically 
arranged from the Creation of the "World to the Death of Charle- 
magne. 12mo, illustrated, cloth extra, black and gold. $1.25. 

STORIES FROM MODERN HISTORY. 12mo, illustrated, cloth 
extra, black and gold. $1.25. 

STORIES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. I2mo, illustrated, cloth 
extra, black and gold. $1.25. 



J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE. 

HISTORY OF THE GREAT REFORMATION OF THE SIX- 
TEENTH CENTURY, in Germany, Switzerland, France, 
England, &c. Five volumes in one. Royal 8vo, 852 pp. With 
20 engravings on steel, and a superb portrait of the author, 
$5.00; sheep, library style, $6.00; half calf, antique, $8.00. 

Now that the dogma of infallibility of the Pope has been promulgated, 
this charming history of similar events, over three hundred years ago, 
acquires a new interest. The narrative is so picturesquely told, it has all the 
attractions of a romance. 



12 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 



JANE R. SOMMERS. 

HEAVENWARD LED; or, The Two Bequests. 12nio, paper, $1.25. 
Cloth extra, $1.75. 

" It is really an excellent ■woT'k."—Cfermantovm Telegraph. 

" This story is one of good society, is graphically told, and a sound moral 
is inculcated."— iJuiiond Herald. 

" Artless in style and simple in plot, it is a pure and beautiful story, and 
richly merits a place in every Sunday-school library in the country,"— ToJedo 
Commercial. 

"After a careful perusal we strongly recomm.end the work as one worthy 
of a place on the centre-table of every Christian family in the land. The 
story is well written, couched in beautiful language, and shows how much 
good may be done by those who take an interest in religious m.atters."— ban- 
ner o/ifte CImrch, Atlanta, &a. 

LOUIS ENAULT. 

THE PUPIL OF THE LEGION OP HONOR. Translated from 
the French by Mrs. Charles Pendleton Tutt. 8vo, paper, $1.00 ; 
cloth, $1.50. 

" This is a translation from the French of a very fresh, quietly written, and 
Interesting story, as unlike the average modern French novel as any thing 
can well be. There is perhaps som.ewhat more sentiment than Americans 
will care for, but the skill with which the story is told will more than atone 
for that."— /San Francisco Daily liecord. 

" A very clear and natural, though rather un-Gallican story. A novel 
without a hero, unless M. De Verteins, who puts in a tardy appearance in 
time to marry Jeanne Derville, say at page one hundred and fifty, or there- 
abouts, it is a remarkably fresh, vivid story, nevertheless— the more vivid, 
I)erhaps, from the fact that, with the exception of Miss Derville herself, 
who is a sort of female John Halifax, it is not.at all overwrought, and has 
none of the spectacularity so common in modern Gallic romance. Bio- 
graphical in tone, and written in the manner of 'John Halifax,' it details 
the struggles of a young girl , Miss Derville, with exceeding minuteness, and 
considerable subjective power. The translation is well executed."— Some 
Journal, New York. 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

THE DESERTED VILLAGE. A Poem. Exquisitely illustrated 

with thirty designs by George Thomas and Birket Foster. 

Elegantly printed in square 16m.o, on the finest calendered 

paper. Cloth, gilt, extra, $1.50; morocco, antique, gilt edges, 

$2.50. 

" There is no poem xn the English language more universally popular 

than the Deserted Village. Its best passages are learned in youth, and 

never quit the m.eTa.oxY.'"— Chambers' s Encyclopedia of English Literature. 

" ' The Deserted Villagd' has an endearing locality, and introduces us to 
beings with whom the imagination contracts an intimate friendship. Fiction 
in poetry is not the reverse of truth, but her soft and enchanted resemblance ; 
and this ideal beauty of nature has been seldom united with so ranch sober 
fidelity, as in the groups and scenery of the ' Deserted Village.' "—Thomas 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 

THE LOVING BALLAD OF LORD BATEMAN. Humorously 
illustrated by George Cruikshank. Sq. 16mo, boards, 25 cents. 

YE BOOK OF SENSE. A new comic book. A companion to Book 
of Nonsense. With thirty-two illustrations. Oblong 8yo, 
boards, 50 cents ; cloth, with plates colored, gilt, $1.00. 



PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. ^3 



CHARLES KNIGHT. 

HALF HOURS (71 TPi THE BEST AUTHORS. With Short Bio- 
graphical an l{ Critical Notices. Elegantlv printed on the finest 
paper. With fine steel portraits. 6 vols-.-crown 8vo. cloth, bev. 
boards, gilt lops, $9.00; half calf, gilt, $18.00; half morocco, gilt 
tops, !i-18,00; or bound in 3 vols., thick crown 8vo, fine English 
cloth, bev. boards, gilt tops, per set, $7.50; half calf, gilt, $12.00. 
Selecting some ohoice passage of the best standard authors, of sufficient 
length to occupy half an hour in its perusal, there is here food for thought 
Jor every day in tt e year ; so that if the purchaser will devote but one half- 
hour each day to its appropriate selection, he will read througli these six 
volumes in one ;;ear, and in such a leisurely manner that the noblest 
thoughts of many of the greatest minds will be firmly implanted in his mind 
forever. For every Sunday there is a suitable selection from some of the 
most eminent wrilers la sacred literature. We venture to say, if the editor's 
idea is carried out, the reader will possess more information and a better 
knowledge of the English classics at the end of the year than he would by 
five years of desultory reading. The variety of reading is so great that no 
one will ever tire of these volumes. It is a library in itself. 

MISS JANE PORTER. 

The two following are new stereotype editions, in large, clear type, with 
initial letters, head and tail pieces, &c. The illustrations were designed 
expressly for this edition, and engraved in the highest style of art. 

THE SCOTTISH CHIEFS. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley. CroAvn 
8vo,718pp, Fine English cloth, gilt. Price, $1.50; half calf, 
gilt, $3.50. 

" Sir Walter Scott, in a conversation with King George IV, in the library 
at Carlton House, admitted that 'The Scottish Chiefs' suggested his 
' Waverly Novels.' "—AlUbone's Dictionary of Authors. 

'•This is a now and by far the best edition of a national romance which 
has been as much read and admired as almost any of Scott's or Dickens' 
novels. It i3 low-priced, well printed, and handsomely bound. Thousand* 
of readers will be glad to go over this stirring tale onco more."— P/iiYarfeJ- 
phia rrcss. 

REGINA MARIA ROCHE. 

THE CHILDREN OF THE ABBEY. Illustrated by P. O. 0. Dar- 

LKY. Uniform with " The Scottish Chiefs." Crown 8vo, 646 pp. 

Fine English cloth, gilt. Price, $1.50; half calf, gilt, $3.50. 

"This classic ia more neatly published in tho new edition than we have 

ever seen it. It was long a standard, and had more favor than 'Thaddeus 

of Warsaw,' and it deserved better. It takes a new lease of existence now, 

and we almost envy those who read it for the lirst time."— iVoriA Ainerican, 

Philadelphia. 

ROBERT McCLURE, M.D., V.S. 

TPIE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN'S STABLE GUIDE. Contain- 
ing a Familiar Description of tho American Stable; the most 
approved Method of Feeding, Grooming, and General Managc- 
jTient of Horses; together with Directions for the Care of 
Carriages, Plarness, &c. Expressly adapted for the owners of 
equipages and fine horses. Cloth extra, illustrated. $1.50. 
A handy manual, giving to the owner of a horse just the information of 

a pracMcal nature that he often feels the need of, and bj' an author who 

thoroughly understands what he is writing about, and what is needed by 

every gentlema-j. 
"Such a t^reatijehas been needed for years, and we think this volume will 

supply the want. The illustrations arc very good and timeiy. "—J^ittsbu]-g/» 

Daily Gazette, 



14 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 

JOHN J. THOMAS. 

THE AMERICAN FRUIT CULTURIST. Containing Practical 
Directions for tlie Propagation and Culture of Fruit Trees in 
flie Nursery, Orcliard, and Garden. Witli Descriptions of tlio 
Principal American and Foreign Varieties cultivated in tlic 
United States. Second edition. Illustrated with 480 accurate 
ligures. Crown 8vo. Cloth, extra, bev. bds., gilt back. $3.00. 
We have read hundreds of criticisms on this book, and they unanimously 

pronounce itthe raostthorough, practical, and comprehensivewoTli published. 

The engravings are not copies of old cuts from other books, but are mainly 

original with the author. 

J. H. WALSH, F.R.C.S. ("Stonehenge.") 

THE HORSE IN THE STABLE AND THE FIELD; his Manage- 
ment in Health and Disease. From tlie last London edition, 
with copious Notes and Additions, by Robekt McCltjre, M.D., 
V.S., author of " Diseases in the American Stable, Field, and 
Farm-yard," with an Essay on the American Trotting Horse, 
and suggestions on the Breeding and Training of Trotters, by 
Ellwood Harvey, M.D. With 80 engravings, and full-page 
engravings from photographs from life. Crown 8vo. Cloth, 
extra, bev. bds. $2.50. 
"This Americanizing of Stonehenge' gives us the best piece of Horse 
liiteratnre of the season. Old horsemen need not be told who ' Stonehenge' 
is in the British Books, or that he is the highest authority in turf and veteri- 
nary affairs. Add to these the labors of such American writers as Dr. 
McClure and Dr. Harvey, with new portraits of some of our most popular 
living horses, and we have a book that no American horseman can afford 
to be without."— 0/iio Farmer, Cleveland, April 24, 1869. 

" It sustains its claim to be the only work which has brought together in a 
single volume, and in clear, concise, and comprehensive language, adequate 
information on the various subjects of which it tve&Xs." —Marioer' s Ma^/azine, 
July, 1869. 

THADDEUS NORRIS. 

AMERICAN FISH CULTURE. Giving all the details of Artificial 
Breeding and Rearing of Trout, Salmon, Shad, and oth«r 
Fislaes. 12mo, illustrated. $1.75. 
'"Norris's American Fish Culture' published in this city by Porter & 
Coates, is passing around the world as a standard. Mr. Norris's authority 
will be quoted beside the tributaries of the Ganges, as already by those of 
the Hudson, the Humber, and the Thames. The English publishers of the 
book are Sampson Low, Son & Co. ; and a late number of the Athenmum, 
after an attentive review of Mr. Norris's metliods, concludes thus: 'Mr. 
Norris has rendered good service to the important subject offish-culture by 
the present publication; and, although his book goes over ground (or water 
rather) occupied to a great extent by English writers on fish culture, it con- 
tains several particulars respecting this art as practised in the United 
States, which are valuable, and may be turned to profitable account by our 
pisciculturists.' "—Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 

THE AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. Embracing the Natural 
History of Sporting Fish, and the Art of Taking Them. With 
Instructions in Fly Fishing, Fly Making, and Rod Making; 
and Directions for Fish Breeding. To which is added Dies Pis- 
catorise; describing noted fishing places, and the pleasure of 
solitary fly fishing. New edition, witli a supplement, contain- 
ing a Description of Salmon Rivers, Inland Trout Fisliing, &c. 
Illustrated with eighty engravings. 8vo, cloth extra. $5.50. 
"Mr. Norris has produced the best book on Angling that has been pub- 
lished in our time. If other authors would follow Mr. Norris's example, 
and not write upon a subject until they had practically mastered it, we 
should have fewer and better works, /fis volume will live. It is thoroughly 
instructive, good-tempered, and genial."— PAitocfeipA/a iYes«. 



PORTER & COATES' P UBLICATIONS. 15 

HIRAM WOODRUFF. 

HIRAM WOODRUFF ON THE TROTTING-HORSE OF AME- 
RICA : How TO Train and Drive Him. With Reminiscences 
of the Trotting-Turf. The Results of the Author's Forty Years' 
Experience and Unequalled Skill in Training and Driving, to- 
gether with a Store of interesting Matter concerning Celebrated 
American Horses. Edited by Charles J. Foster, of " Wilkes's 
Spirit of the Times." New edition, with Supplement, bring- 
ing it down to 1873. Illustrated with Steel-plate portrait of 
Hiram Woodruff, and full page engravings from Photographs 
fromLife,and Sketches of "Lady Thome," " Goldsmith Maid," 
" Mac," " Flora Temple," &c., &c. 12mo, cloth, extra, $2.25: half 
calf, gilt, $f. 00. *- ' ' . , , , 

"The estimation in which we hold it is well known to our readers. We be- 
lieve it to be t/ie most practical and instructive hook that ever loas published con- 
cerning the trotting horse; and those who own or take care of horses of other 
descriptions may buy and read it with a great deal of profit."— Wilkes' s Soirit 
of the Times. 

" Hiram Woodruff was the great trainer of his day; but, by his unsullied in- 
tegrity and unequalled capacity, he rose above his profession. No man 
could ever say of him that he had his price. Indeed, it is the universal tes- 
timony of all who knew him,— friends and foes,— that his integrity was ab- 
solutely unassailable. It is a book for which every man who owns a horse 
ought tosubscribe. The information which it contains is ivorth ten times its cost." 
—Mr. Bonner's New York Ledger, 

" This is a masterly treatise by the master of his profession,— the ripened pro- 
duct of forty years' experience in handling, training, riding, and driving the 
trotting horse. There is no book like it in any language on the subject of 
which it treats. It is accepted as authority by the owners of racing trotters, 
and of fast roadsters. Its publication has been hailed by gentlemen as criti- 
cally appreciative as Eobert Bonner, and by trainers and drivers as disting- 
uished as Sam Hoagland, Dan Mace, and Dan Pfifer. The book is unques- 
tionably one of great value. For in America and England the development 
Of the horse has long been considered second only in importance to the de- 
velopment of man. This wOrk contains the results of forty years' uninter- 
rupted labor in bringing the trotter up to the highest speed and greatest 
endurance of which he is capable. Before we read it we had seen with curi- 
ous surprise very hearty commendation of it and eulogy of its author in the 
leading Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist journals. No wonder, for 
Hiram Woodruff's system is based on the law of love."— New York Tribune. 

" We have a decided distaste for everything connected with horse-racing, 
and when the "Trotting Horse of America" was put into our hands the 
book dropped of its own weight on to the table. Ashamed of this prejudice, 
we took it up, and soon found ourselves reading at full pace about the way 
colts should be raised, and horses trained, and racers cared for, and the breed 
improved In reading the book we were struck with the analogy be- 
tween the scientific treatment of the horse and the best treatment of the 
human being What a pity parents and teachers would not learn wis- 
dom from the horse-trainer!"- The (iV. Y.) Liberal Christian ( Unitarian). 

" One may read and study this book with profit, for it was written by a man 
who loved the horse, knew his peculiarities, and from the experience of 
years utters words of wisdom as to the best way of training and driving the 
noblest animal ever given to man for service. The advice, the suggestions, the 
rules given in the book are invaluable. If we owned a "stable," we would 
make our grooms study it; if we were a Vermont farmer, each son should 
have a copy, for. while it is specially devoted to trotting horses, the work 
contains valuable information for every man who owns or drives ahorse."— 
Boston Watchman and Reflector, (Baptist). 

" The record of his experience and suggestions constitutes, therefore, a valu- 
able accession to our knowledge, and will prove to be of standard authority 
among the most skilful. The graphic style of his descriptions, the vivid pic- 
tures he draws of the breeding and education of his favorites, and the remi- 
niscences hfi recalls of incidents on the turf, form a work of great merit. . . . 
Those who are desirous to form an accurate idea of the characteristics of the 
trotting horse, for their benefit as riders or drivers, cannot find any other 
work in our language so replete rvith useful information, interesting hints, and 
readable anecdotes. Hiram Woodruff is now dead, and it will be many a 
year before we shall look upon his equal in his line of business."— TAe 



16 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 



J. R. SYPHER. 

THE YOUNG AMERICA SPEAKER. Designed for the use of the 

younger classes in Schools, Lyceums, Temperance Societies, 

&c. Containing selections in Prose, Poetry and Dialogue ; in 

st^le, sentiment and expression, suited to the minds and 

spirits of the youth of the present day. ICmo, half bound, 75 

cents. 

"This little volume contains unexceptional selections of Prose, Poetry and 

Dialogue. The selections evidence extensive reading, good taste, and some 

experience with the predelictions of young declaimers."— iV'eio Orleans 

JPicayune. 

"An important and interesting addition to our school literature. The 
pieces presented in the work are well selected, and they have this advan- 
tage—each piece is short, and will not too seriously strain the faculties of 
any student. Being short, a greater variety is presented than in most 
speakers now before the public."— JSanner of the Church, Atlanta, Ga. 

THE AMERICAN POPULAR SPEAKER. Designed for the use 
of Schools, Lyceums, Temperance Societies, &c., &c. 12mo, 
half bound, 384 pp., $1.50. 

" Admirably adapted to the purposes of declamation. We recognize many 
of the old standard pieces which boj's have declaimed since our remem- 
brance, with many also which we have not found in other similar compila- 
tions. The book is not encumbered with a multiplicity of rules and direc- 
tions which serve to confuse and hinder the students rather than to help 
them ; but a few, simple, practical directions are given which are admirable, 
and all that are needed. We commend the volume to the attention or 
teachers and students as one of high merit."— JPoriland Evening Argus. 

" Excellent selections of prose and poetry and dialogues. The subjects 
embrace every conceivable want for school declamations with concise 
practical instructions for the speaker."— iyew JBedford Evening Standard. 

DAVID A. HARSHA. 

THE MOST EMINENT ORATORS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN 
TIMES: Containing Sketches of their Lives, Specimens of 
their Eloquence, and an Estimate of their Genius. 8vo. With 
Portraits, pp. 527. Cloth extra, $3.50; sheep, marbled edges, 
library style, $4.50; Turkey morocco, extra, gilt edges, $9.00. 

The work, though rich in extracts, is no mere compilation, but an original 
production of the highest value ; and a fev/ of its distinguishing features are 
modestly set forth in the preface. It consists of historical and critical 
sketches of some of those who have been most eminent both as orators and 
statesmen, including a plain and brief account of the leading public events 
in the life of each. Copious extracts are made from their best orations and 
speeches, and in this department the work is very comprehensive, including 
in its gems some of the finest passages in English and American literature. 
Another important feature of the volume is a delineation of the oratorical 
character— an analysis of that eloquence whose bewitching strains have en- 
chanted listening senates and popular assemblies. Comments are made on 
ihe leading peculiarities of each orator ; his foj-te is generally pomted out, 
the great secret of his power unfolded, and the charms of his manner de- 
scribed—some of the sketches in this respect being drawn by master hands. 
Iji addition, a number of anecdotes, some of them original, are related— 
thus making the book both amusing and instructive. The great men whose 
lives, characters, and oratory are specially treated of, are eighteen in 
number. 

" An interesting volume. The selections are characteristic and happy, 
and the critical and explanatory suggestions and commentary useful and 
just."— .Bt!/us Choate. 



PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 17 



HENRY T. COATES. 

THE COMPREHENSIVE SPEAKER. Designed for the use of 
Schools, Academies, Lyceums, &c. Carefully selected from the 
best authors, with Notes. Large 12mo, 672 pages, half bound, 
cloth sides, $1.75. 

Philadelphia, April 18, 1872. 
I consider your " Compreliensive Speaker" to be one of the most valuable 
contributions to tbe literary apparatus of scbools, academies, and lyceums 
ever published. But its usefulness is not limited to these institutions: it is 
an excellent family-table book, and should be in every private as well as in 
every public collection. 

In carrying your readers through various departments of literature, from 
"gay to grave, from lively to severe," you have evinced much taste and 
judgment, as well as great industrj-. That the sale of so good a book should 
be large I should be sorry to doubt. 

S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE, 
Author of AlUbone's Dictionary of Authors. 

'It contains a judicious selectionof pieces from the best authors, omitting 
all of doubtful morality, of a sectarian or political character, and of trans- 
ient literary value. Great care has been taken in the selection of extracts 
to give the genuine text of the author without the errors in quotation 
and punctuation which are such a frequent blemish in this class of school 
books. A large proportion of the contents are from American authors, fur- 
nishing the materials for a comparative survey of our native literature."— 
The New York Daily Tribune. 

"It is an excellent selection of pieces for declamation and reading."— Tfte 
Nation, New York. 

"On careful examination, we do not hesitate to characterize it as the best 
compilation of its class that has ever come under our notice. The merits of 
this large and varied collection are numerous. Hackneyed pieces have 
been carefully excluded, and political and sectarian pieces are not to be 
found in its pages. There are, of course, some humorous passages, in prose 
and verse, but none that are immoral or vulgar."— 2Vi6 Philadelphia Dress. 

" We cannot too highly commend the felicitous manner in which the com- 
piler has accomplished his work. It is valuable as a volume for general 
reading as well. It seems to us wholly good, with nothing to add or change 
—a diflicult achievement in view of the number of " Speakers" already in 
e:s.isteiioe."— Ohio State Journal, Columbus, Ohio. 

" The instructions are simple and practical, most admirably adapted to 
the student's use. Mr. Coates has shown in the preparation of this work a 
wide range of scholarship and rare good taste. The book is worthy of a 
gTamasvLCcesa."— Watchman and Mejiector, Boston, (Daplist). 

" We need only say of this book that it is a remarkably rich collection of 
excerpts from the very best specimens of English prose and poetry, selected 
with singularly good taste and judgment. Its influence, as a familiar school- 
book, cannot bo but very elevating."— The Advance, Chicago. 



THE LATEST AND MOST IMPROVED GAMES. 

THE INSTRUCTIVE GAME OF AUTHORS. Containing on each 
card the leading characters in the books named, the history 
of the author or the leading events mentioned m the books 
named, thus familiarizing one with each writer, by attracting 
the attention to some special persons or prominent incidents. 
Also, containing short biographical notices, in handsome 
cloth case. 50 cents. 

THE INSTRUCTIVE GAME OF POETS. Uniform with the above 
In style. Cloth case. 50 cents. 



18 rORTER k COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 

JAMES HOGG, the Ettrick Shepherd. 

THE MOUNTAIN BARD AND FOREST MINSTREL. Legendary 
Songs and Ballads. AVith two fine engravings on steel. 32mo, 
cloth, CO cents; illuminated side, 90 cents ; Turkey mor., %\.m. 
" He is a poet, in the highest acceptation of the name."— iord Jeffrey. 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

POETICAL WORKS. Witli a fine engraving on steel. S2rao, 
cloth, 00 cents; illuminated side, 90 cents; Turkey mor., 31.50. 

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD. 

THE FARMER'S BOY, and other Poems. Illustrated v/ith a fine 
engraving on steel. 32mo, cloth, GO cents; illuminated side, 
90 cents ; Turkey morocco, $1.50. 
"Few compositions in the English language have been so generally ad- 
mired as the Farmer's Boy. Those who agreed in but little else in literary 
matters, were unanimous in the commendation of the poetical powers dis- 
played by the peasant and journeyman mechanic."— ^«i6one's Dictionary 
Authors. 

ROBERT BURNS. 

POETICAL WORKS. With a fine engraving on steel. 32mo, 
cloth, GO cents ; Illuminated side, 90 cents ; Turkey mor., $1.50. 
'• Burns is by far the greatest poet that ever sprang from the bosom of the 
people, and lived and died in an humble condition. Indeed, no country in 
the world but Scotland could have produced such a man ; and he will bo 
forever regarded as the glorious representative of the genius of his country. 
He was born a poet if ever man was."— Pro/. Wilson's JEssay on Burns. 

WILLIAM DODD, LL.D. 

THE BEAUTIES OF SHAKSPEARE. From the last London 
edition, -with large additions, and the author's latest correc- 
tions. With two line engravings on steel. Fine edition, on 
toned paper, with carmine border. Square 24mo. Cloth, gilt 
edges, $1.50; Turkey, 83.00; 32mo, cloth, 60 cts.; illuminated side, 
90 cts.; Turkey morocco, $1.59. 
This republication of a book so universally and deservedlji- popular as 

Dodd's Beauties, makes it peculiarly valuable as a gift book. 

THOMAS HOOD. 

POETICAL AVORKS. With a fine engraving on steel. 32mo. 
Cloth, GO cts.; illuminated side, 90 cts.; Turkey morocco, SL50. 
"Hood's verse, whether serious or comic,— whether serene, like a cloud- 
less autumn evening, or spar Idling with puns like a Irosty January midnight 

with stars,— was ever pregnant with materials for thought Like 

every author distinguished for true comic humor, there was a deep vein of 
melancholy pathos running through his mirth ; and even when his sun 
shone brightly, its light seemed often reflected as if only over the rim of a 
cloud.— jD. jr. Moir. 

THOMAS MOORE. 

THE MORAL AND BEAUTIFUL FROM THE POEMS OF. 

Edited by Rev. Walter Colton, author of "Deck and Port," 

&c., &c. With a fine engraving on steel. 32mo. Cloth, 60 cts.; 

illuminated sides, 90 cts.; Turkey morocco, $1.50. 

" The combinations of his wit are wonderful. Quick, subtle, and varied, 

■ever suggesting new thoughts or images, or unexpected turns of expression 

—now drawing resources from classical literature or of the ancient fathers— 

now diving into the human heart, and now skimming tlie fields of fancy— the 

wit or imagination of Moore (for they are compounded together), is a true 

Ariel, ' a creature of the elements,' that is ever buoyant and full of life and 

:Bpirit."— C/iam6er«'s Eng. Lit, 



PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 19 



ALFRED HOWARD. 

THE BEAUTIES OF CHESTERFIELD. Consisting of Selections 
from the Works of Lord Chesterfield, 18mo, illustrated. Cloth 
extra, black and gold, $1.25. 



CHARLES CALEB COLTON. 

LACON ; or, Many Things in Few Words Addressed to Those Who 
Think. Revised edition, with a life of the author. Globe edition, 
16mo, cloth extra, $1.25. 
"It is one of the most excellent collections of apothegms in the lan- 
guage,"— .iiUi&OTie's Dictionary of Authors. 

COL. GEORGE CHESNEY. 

THE BATTLE OF DORKING, AND GERMAN CONQUEST OP 
ENGLAND IN 1875 ; or, Reminiscences of a Volunteer. By an 
Eyewitness, in 1925. Reprinted from Blackwood's Magazine. 
12mo, 64 pp., 30 cents; cloth, 50 cents. 

"Everybody is talking about it, and everybody is quite right. We do not 
know that we ever saw anything better in any magazine, or any better ex- 
ample of the vraisemblance which a skilled artist can produce by a variety 
of minute touches. ***** The writer of this paper, living about 
1925, gives his son an account of his adventures as a Volunteer durmg the 
invasion of England fifty years before, and so powerful is the narrative, so 
intensely real the impression it produces, that the coolest disbeliever in 
panics cannot read it without a flush of annoyance, or close it without the 
thought that after all, as the world now stands, some such day of humilia- 
tion for England Is at least possible. The suggested condition precedent of 
invasion, the destruction of the fleet by torpedoes attached by a new inven- 
tion to our ships, has attracted many minds ; and with the destruction of the 
regulars, the helplessness of the brave but half organized Volunteers, and 
the absence of arrangement, make up a picture which, fanciful as it is, wo 
seem, as we read it, almost to have seen. It describes so exactly what we 
all feel that, under the circumstances, Englishmen, if refused time to organ- 
ize, would probably do."— (Spectator {London.) 

" The extraordinary force and naturalness of the picture of the calamity 
itself, its consistency throughout, from the bits of the last Times leader, read 
by the unhappy volunteer in the City, to the description of the conduct of 
the Germans in the fatal Battle of Dorking, and in the occupation of the 
English homes which follows, seem to us as natural in its touches as can 
well be conceived."— PaW 3Iall Gazette. 

" The Britons are stirred up by it as they have been by no one magazine 
article of this generation. The 'Fight at Dame Europa's School' did not 
hit the bull's eye of English feeling more squarely than this clever shot from 

old Maga The verisimilitude is wonderful. We have read nothing 

like it outside of Kobinson Crusoe."— JcwrnaJ of Commerce {New York.)' 



THE SECOND ARMADA. A Chapter of Future History. Being 
a Reply to the Above. I2nio, paper covers. 10 cents. 

The story of the German Conquest has produced a sensation both in 
America and England, having run into eight editions in this Country in less 
than one month. The "London Times" of June 22d contained their version 
of the famous battle, with a totally different result however, and also had a 
long editorial on the two versions. 'This is given also with the reply. 

" An intensely interesting little book, and must be read to be appreci- 
ated."— .fVovMience Qasette. 



20 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS 

OLIVER BUNCE. 

ROMAISrCE OF THE REVOLUTION, Being true Stories of the 
Thrilling Adventures, Romantic Incidents, Hair-breadth 
Escapes and Heroic Exploits of the Days- of '76. Laid paper, 
with six illustrations. IQmo, cloth, extra, Sl.50. 

While the principal eventi? of the history of our glorious Revolution are 
Iniown to every intelligent American, much remains to be disclosed of the 
inner history of the war, and the motives and x>atriotlsm of the people. 
There were deeds of individual daring, heroism worthy of the proudest days 
of Greece and Kome, dashing and hazardous enterprises, and hardships 
bravely borne, performed by subalterns and private soldiers in the grand 
army of heroes, which should never bo forgotten. To collect and preserve 
the sketches of these almost forgotten passages of the war, as they originally 
appeared in the newspapers and private letters of that stirring period, an'd 
the stories told by scarred veterans round the blazing hearth-stone ; these 
legends of the past; has been the object of this work, and the publishers 
are confident that none will rise from its perusal withCAit acknowledging 
that " Truth is stranger than fiction," and with a deeper feeling of reverence 
for the heroes of the days of '76 

" A collection of anecdotes and traditions relating to the War of Inde- 
pendence, which presents in a brilliant light chivalrous adventures called 
forth by the struggles of the early patriots for the freedom of their country. 
If some of the incidents here recorded have rather an apocryphal air, they 
yet serve to illustrate the spirit of the time, and present the truth more 
vividly to the imagination than the more formal pages of history. TJie 
volume is eminently adapted to popular reading."— ifarper's Magazine. 

CECIL B. HARTLEY. 

LIFE OF THE EINIPRESS JOSEPHINE, "Wife of Napoleon I. 
With a fine Portrait on Steel. 16mo. Printed on line laid paper. 
Cloth, extra, $1.50. 

"Her career and her eharaeter were alike remarkable; surronnded by 
the demoralizations of the French Court, she was a Eoman matron in stem 
rectitude, with a pre-eminent fidelity to a sensitive conscience; and blended 
comprehensive genius with a warm, heart and a noble personal jiresence. 
She was the peer of Napoleon, and in some respects his superior. Her exe- 
cutive force was less, but her foresight was greater. It is to her that the 
index finger of history points,, as arn example of female grandeur. Napoleon 
got a divorce from her because he wished his seed to inherit the French 
Crown. The son born of his Hapsburg marriage died crownless, while the 
grandson of Josephine now wears the purple of France— this is more than 
poetic justice. * * * In the book before us, the story of her life i?, told in 
a simple, classic style, and possesses a fascination rarely met with in bio- 
graphy."— C/iicafl'o Mvening Journal. 

MRS. ANNA JAMESON. 

LIVES OF CELEBRATED, FEMALE SOVEREIGNS AND IL- 
LUSTRIOUS WOMEN. Edited by Mary E. Hewitt. With 
four portraits on steel. IGnio, beautifully printed on laid paper. 
Cloth, extra, $1.50. 

The celebrated Mrs. Jameson, who wields a powerful, ready, and pleasant 
pen, has taken hold of some of the leading events in the brilliant lives of 
some of the most world-noted women, and depicted them in very attractive 
colors. It is a lovely book for young ladies, and will give them & taste for 
history. 



PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 21 

W. S. GILBERT. 

TI-IE BAB BALLADS; or, Much Sound and Little Sense. With 
113 illustrations by the author. Square 12nio., cloth, bev. gilt 
edges, Sl.7.5, 
These Ballads, first published in periodicals, rapidly achieved a whim- 
sical popularity, which soon demanded their publication in a collected 
form. Much of this is due to the series of inexpressibly funny drawings 
by the author, who is happy in being artist enough to interpret his own 
humor in these admirable sketches: we pity the man who cannot 
appreciate and enjoy them. The Ballads will rank with the best of 
Thackeray, Bon Gaultier, or Ingoldsby. Let every one who in these dull 
times has the blues, procure a copy as the cheapest remedy. While it is a 
nearly perfect fac simile of the English copy, it is only half the price. 

•' Everybody lilies, occasionally, a little sensible nonsense. ' Mother Goose' 
is enjoyed in childhood, and something similar, but more advanced, is 
needed to provoke a smile on a wearied face in later years. This volume of 
comic poems answers such a purpose ; some of them have a sly moral, while 
others are simply amusing from their supreme absurdity. The mirth is 
aided by the author's original cuts, which are quite in keeping with the 
poetry."— .Advance, Chicago, the Great Religious Weekly. 

C. M. METZ. 

DRAWING-BOOK OF THE HUMAN FIGURE. With many Ex- 
amples from the best Studies of the Old Masters, beautifully 
engra,ved in the first style of the art. Folio, half morocco, an- 
tique, $7.50. 

H. B. STAUNTON. 

THE AMERICAN CHESS PLAYER'S HANDBOOK. Teaching 
the Rudiments of the Game, and giving an analysis of all the 
recognized openings, amplitied by appropriate games actually 
played by Morphy, Horwitz, Anderssen, Staunton, Paulson, 
Montgomery, Meek, and others. From the work of Staunton. 
Illustrated. 16mo, cloth, extra, bev. bds. $1.25. 
" Among the great wants of students of this noble game of chess has been 
a handbook which should occupy a middle ground between the large and 
expensive work of Staunton and the ten cent guides with which the country 
is hooded. This want is happily supplied by the jiresent volume. It is an 
abridgment of Staunton's work, and contains full accounts and descriptions 
of the common openings and defences, besides a large number of illustra- 
tive games and several endings and problems. It is a book which will be 
decidedly useful to all beginners in the game, arfd interesting to those who 
arealready proficient in it."— Peori« Transcript. 

"Will prove an invaluable guide for the admirers of the great and strate- 
gic game of chess. It should be in the hands of every chess-player."— 
Cralesburg Hepubliean. 

" It is the best manual for the beginner with which we are acquainted,— 
exceedingly clear and intelligible."— JVcw Orleans I'icayunc. 

SARAH E. SCOTT. 

EVERY-DAY COOKERY, FOR EVERY FAMILY. Containing 
nearly 1000 Receipts adapted to moderate incomes, and com- 
prising the best and most economical methods of roasting, 
boiling, broiling and stewing all kinds of meat, fish, poultry, 
game and vegetables; simple and inexpensive instructions 
for making pies, puddings, tarts, and all other pastry ; how to 
pickle and preserve fruits and vegetables; suitable cookery 
for invalids and children ; food in season, and how to choose 
it; the best ways to make domestic wines and syrups, and 
ample receipts for bread, cake, soups, gravies, sauces, desserts, 
jellies, brandied fruits, soaps, perfumes, &c., &e., and full direc- 
'tions for carving. Illustrated. 16mo., cloth. Price, $1,25. 



22 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 



OTTO MULLER. 

CHARLOTTE ACKERMAN. A Theatrical Romance, founded 
upon interesting facts in the life of a young artist of the last 
century. Translated from the German, by Mrs. Chapman 
Coleman and her Daughters, the translators of the Mulbach 
Novels. Paper, $1.00; cloth, $1.50. 

"The author of this romance has acquired a solid reputation in Ger- 
many, and it is evident, from this translation, that it is deserved."— San 
Francisco Daily Record. 

T. S. ARTHUR. 

IDLE HANDS, AND OTHER STORIES. A new volume by this 
popular author. "With six exquisite full-page cuts, engraved 
by Lauderbach. Square 8vo. Cloth, elegant, $1.50; cloth, full 
gilt, extra, $2.00. 

" The most popular of all our American writers on domestic subjects."— 
Godey's Lady's Book. 

" In the princely mansions of the Atlantic merchants, and in the rude log 
cabins of the backwoodsmen, the name of Arthur is equally known and 
cherislied as a friend of virtue."- G'raftam's Magazine. 

"As a writer of shortmoral stories and sketches, Mr. Arthur has probably 
no superior in this country. There is no mistaking the lesson intended to 
be taught. Thousands of young readers will hail the a<ivent of this book 
with genuine ioy."— Indianapolis Evening News. 

"The name of T. S. Arthur is so well known as a charming writer for 
juveniles as well as for adults, that to commend this selection of beautiful 
and instructive stories, so tastefully gotten up by the enterprising publish- 
ers, would be but to put pencil and paint to iinished work."— OntraJ Baptist, 
St. Louis. 

"The paper and printing are superb, and the binding, which allows the 
margin to be wide, is in the best style of green and gold. It is a book for the 
holidays."— TFo»-ce«ter {Mass.) Daily Spy. 



FRIENDLY HANDS AND KINDLY WORDS. Stories illustra- 
tive of the Law of Kindness, the Power of Perseverance, and 
the Advantages of Little Helps. Eight fine illustrations by 
H. K. Browne, John Absolom, and the brothers DaLziel. 16mo, 
cloth, extra, 75 cents. 

SMALL BEGINNINGS; OR, THE WAY TO GET ON. Beauti- 
fully illustrated with eight fine drawings by H. K. Browne, 
John Absolom and the brothers Dalziel, 16mo, cloth, extra, 
75 cents. 

THE ART OF DOING OUR BEST: As seen in the Lives and 
Stories ofs ome thorough Workers. Eight fine illustrations by 
H. K. Browne, John Absolom, and the brothers Dalziel. 16mo, 
cloth, extra; 75 cents. 



YE BOOK OP SENSE. A new comic book. A Companion to 
Lear's celebrated Book of Nonsense. With thirty-two illus- 
trations, brightly colored, Oblong 8vo, boards, $1.00; cloth, 
extra gilt, $1.50. 



PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 23 

MISS K. B. McKEEVER, 

Author of "The FlouncSed Robe, and What it 
Woodclifife," "Silver Threads,' 

These stories have the merit of being entertaining, instructive, and really 
much superior to the common run of Juveniles. The Springfield Republican, 
which is competent authority, pronounces them the best ana handsomest 
Juvenile Books of the season.''— ij/o>w Republican. 

" Miss McKeever always writes with point and meaning, and in a manner 
to gain and hold the a.tteation.."—Swida3/-School Times. 

ELEANOR'S THREE BIRTHDAYS. « Charity seeketli npt her 
own." Illustrated. IGnio., 295 pp., $1.00. 

MARY LESLIE'S TRIALS. "Is not easily provoked." Illus- 
trated. 16mo., $1.00. 

LUCY FORRESTER'S TRIUMPHS. "Thinketh no evil, believ- 
eth all things, hopeth all things." Illustrated. 16nao. Price, 
Sl.OO. 

R. M. BALLANTYNE. 

New and beautiful editions of these world-renowned books, second only 
to those of Cooper and Marryatt, and better than those of Mayne Eeid, 
in the pictures i^resented to the reader of wild life among the Indians, the 
hairbreadth escapes and fierce delights of a hunters' life, and the perils of 
"Life on the Ocean "Wave." Ballantyne's name is well known to every 
intelligent boy of spirit. Leading the reader into the jungles and forests 
of Africa, sweeping sver the vast expanse of our western prairies, " fast In 
the ice" of the Polar regions, or coasting the shores of sunny climes, he 
ever jDresents new and enchanting pictures of adventure or beauty to 
enchain the attention, absorb the interest, excite the feelings, and always 
at the same time instructing the reader, 

THE GORILLA HUNTERS. A Tale of the Wilds of Africa. IGmo, 
illustrated, cloth, extra, $1.25. 
"Thoroughly at home on subjects of adventure. Like all his stories for 
boys, thrilling in interest and abounding in incidents of every kind."— The 
Quiver, London. 

THE DOG CRUSOE. A Tale of the Western Prairies. 16mo, illus- 
trated, cloth, extra, $1.25. 
"This is another of Mr. Ballantyne's excellent stories for the youns. 
They are all well written, full of romantic incidents, and are of uo doubt- 
ful moral tendency ; on the contrary, they are invariably found to embody 
sentiments of true piety, manliness and Yivtne." —Inverness Advertiser. 

GASCOYNE, THE SANDAL-WOOD TRADER. A Tale of the 
Pacific. 16mo, illustrated, cloth, extra, $1.25. 
" 'Gascoyne ' will rivet the attention of every one, whether old or young, 
who pursues it."— JSdinbiirgh Courant. 

FREAKS ON THE FELLS; or, Three Months' Rustication. And 
why I did not become a Sailor. Illustrated, 16rao, cloth, extra, 
$1.25. 
" Mr. Ballantyne's name on the title-page of a book, has for some years 

been a guaranty to buyersjthat the volume is cheap at its price."— iondon 

Athenaeum. 

THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST. A Tale of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. 16mo. Illustrated, cloth, extra, $1.25. 
This is generally considered the best of Mr. Ballantyne's famous narra- 
tives of Indian warfare and border life. In this field he is second only to 
Cooper. 

SHIFTING WINDS. A Story of the Sea. C],oth, extra, illustrated, 
$1.25. 



24 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 

R. M. BALLANTYNE— Second Series. 

" Indulgent fathers and good uncles will look a long time before they will 
find books more Interesting or instructive for boys than these. In the four 
volumes the author introduces his young readers to the wonders of the Arctic 
regions, the wild hunting-grounds of the Hudson's Bay Company, the rugged 
coast and midnight sun of Norway, and the exciting chase of the monsters 
of the deep on the pathless fields of the ocean. He is quite at home among 
tlie scenes he describes, and has the faculty of taking the boys along witli 
him in his narrative, and making them feel at home in his company. His 
object is to give information and to inculcate sound principles of virtue, and 
he mingles enough of fancy with the fact and the moral lesson to make both 
more impressive and the more sure to be remembered. The boy who reads 
these volumes at the time when his mind is most susceptible to the stirring 
scenes of peril and adventure, will cultivate a taste for more complete and 
elaborate works of travel and discovery, in mature years."— iJev. Daniel 
March, JD.D. 

FIGHTING THE^VHALES; or, Doings and Dangers on a, Fishing 
Cruise. Witli four full-page Illustrations. 18mo., Illustrated. 
75 cents. 

AAVAY IN THE WILDERNESS; or, Life xVmong the Red In- 
dians and Fur-Traders of North America. 18mo., Illustrated, 
Cloth, extra, 75 cents. 
It is one of the most delightful books this famed author has written. 
Whilst describing the exciting adventures of Indian lil'e, ho conveys new 
and attractive information about the far north portion of our continent. 

Seldom, if ever, has there been a better description of life in the lands of 
the Hudson's Bay Company, than is found in this little work. 

FAST IN THE ICE ; or. Adventures in the Polar Regions. ISmo. 
Illustrated. Cloth, extra, 75 cents. 
" Is attractive and useful. There is no more practical way of communi- 
cating elementary Information than that which has been adopted in this 
series. When we see contained in 144 small pages, as in "Fast in the Ice," 
such information as men of fair education should iDossess about icebergs, 
Northern lights, Esquimaux, musk-oxen, bears, walruses, etc., together 
with all the ordinary incidents of an Arctic voyage, woven into a clear con- 
nected narrative, we must admit that a good work has been done, and that 
tlie author deserves the gratitude of young people of all classes."— ion don 
Athenceum. 

CHASING THE SUN; or, Rambles in Norway. 18mo. Illustrated. 
Cloth, extra, 75 cents. 
Describing a country almost new to us, the author tells of many strange 
natural curiosities, of the manners and customs of the people, and the 
curious modes of travel and conveyance. 

ANNE BOWMAN. 

THE BEAR HUNTERS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 16mo. 
Illustrated. Cloth, extra, S1.25. 
A story of trapper life in the Rocky Mountains. A better insight of real 
life in these uncivilized wilds is gained from books like this than from scores 
of the dry details of travellers. 

ADVENTURES IN CANADA; or, Life in the Woods. 16mo. 
Illustrated. Cloth, $1.25. 
This is not a mere work of fiction, but the true narrative of a bright boy who 
roughed it in the bush when Canada, the home of adventure and sporting, 
was much wilder than it is now. The boys, especially, will be charmed with 
the adventures with Indians, bears, and wolves, the racoon hunts and duck 
shooting; while the older class of readers will be drawn to it by its chp.rm- 
ing description of the scenery, and condition of what may, before long, be- 
come a part of the United States. 



PORTER & COATES PUBLICATIONS. 



FOSTER'S TRANSLATION. 

THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS ; or, The Arabian Nights' 
Entertainment. A new edition. With eight full-iDage illustra- 
tions. Large 12mo, cloth, extra, $1.50. 
" More widely diffused araons the nations of the earth than any other 
product of the human mind. While it is read or recited to crowds of eager 
listeners in tho Arab coffee-houses of Asia and Africa, it is just as eagerly 
perused on tho banks of the Tagus, the Tiber, tho Seine, the Thames, the 
Hudson, the Mississippi, and the Ganges. , . . While there are children 
on earth to love, so Jong will the 'Arabian Nights' be loved."— Appleton's 
American Encyclopedia, article "Arabian A'ioMs." 

D. W. BELISLE. 

THE AMERICAN FAMILY ROBINSON; or, Tho Adventures ot 
a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West. 16mo. Illus- 
trated. Cloth, extra, 61.25. 

DANIEL DE FOE. 

THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OP ROBINSON CRUSOE. In- 
cluding n, Memoir of the Author, and an Essay on his Writings. 
Large 12mo. Illustrated. Cloth, extra. Price, $1.50. 

Carefully jjrinted from new stereoty;s9 plates, with large, clear, open type, 
this Is the best, as well as the cheapest, edition of this charming work pub- 
lished. 

" Perhaps there exists no work, either of instruction or entertainment, in 
the English language, which has been more generally read and more uni- 
versally admired, than ' The liife and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.' It 
is difficult to say in what the charm consists, by which persons of all classes 
and denominations are thus fascinated; yet the majority of readers will re- 
collect it as among the first works that awakened and interested their youth- 
ful attention, and feel, even in advanced life and in the maturity of their 
understanding, that there are still associated with Robinson Crusoe the sen- 
timents peculiar to that period, when all is bright, which the experience ot 
after-life tends only to darken and destroy."— Sir Waller Scolt. 

JEAN RODOLPHE WYSS. 

THE SYvISS FAMILY ROBINSON; or, The Adventures of a 
Father, Mother, and four Sons, on a Desert Island. Two parts, 
complete in one volume, illustrated. Large 12nio. Cloth, extra. 
Price, $1.50. 

GRIMM, 

POPULAR GERMAN TALES AND HOUSEHOLD STORIES. 
Collected by the Brothers Grimm. With nearly 200 illustra- 
tions by Edward H. Wehnert. Complete in one volume. New 
edition. Fine English cloth, bev. bds., full gilt back and side 
stamp, $2.50; half calf, gilt, $4.50. 
The stories in these volumes are world-renowned, and they will continue 

to be read, as they long have been, in different languages, and to charm and 

delight not only tho young, but many readers in mature life who love the 

recollections of childhood and its innocent diversions. 

COUNTESS DE SEGUR. 

FRENCH FAIRY TALES. Translated by Mrs. Coleman and her 
da,ughters. With ten full-page ilhistrations, by Gustave Dore 
and Jules Didier. IGmo, price, 81.50. 
The Countess de Segur.the authoress of this charming work, and the 
mother of the wife of the French ambassador at Florence, tho brilliant Ba- 
roness Malaret, is a Russian lady, and a daughter of the heroic Prince 
Rostopchin, who ordered tho burning of Moscow, when Napoleon caiitured 
that devoted city. 

"Not many of the fairy stories written for children are so admirably con- 
trived or so charmingly written as these."— Worcester Daily Spy. 



26 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS , 



HARRY CASTLEMON. 

THE GUNBOAT SERIES. 6 vols., 16mo, illustrated. Cloth, black 
and gold, $7.50. 

Frank the Young Naturalist. Frank on a Gunboat. 

Frank in the Woods. Frank belore Vicksburg. 

Frank on the Lower Mississippi. Frank on the Prairie. 

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN SERIES. 3 vols., 16mo, illustrated. 

Cloth, black and gold, $3.75. 

Frank among the Eancheros. Frank at Don Carlos' Eancho. 

Frank in the Mountains. 

THE GO-AHEAD SERIES. 3 vols., 16mo, illustrated. Cloth, 

black and gold, $4.50. 

Go Ahead ; or. The Fisher Boy's Motto. 

No Moss ; or, The Career of a Kolling Stone. 

Tom Newcombe 

JULIA McNAIR WRIGHT. 

A MILLION TOO MUCH. A Temperance Tale. By Mrs. Julia 
McNair Wright, author of " Priest and Nun," " Almost a Nun," 
"New York Ned," "John and Demijohn," &c. 12mo, Fine 
cloth, $1.50. 

" It is a valuable acquisition to the temperance literature of the day, pro- 
bably the best work of the kind ever published, as it deals with absolute 
facts. It is really a wonderful book, and those who would work effectively 
in staying the tide of intemperance, would do well to circulate it."— JSloom- 
ington Daily Leader. 

"It is infinitely better than stories of the kind generally are."— PTiiiadei- 
pJiia Inquirer. 

"This story is one of the best pieces of temperance advocacy we have seen. 
Its scenes are graphic; its progress only too natural, and its conclusion a 
powerful warning. It is less of a tract than many of the same kind of tales, 
and merits attention for the freshness and force of its delineations."— Tfte 
Age, Philadelphia. 

" A first class temperance story. The career of one born with appetite for 
drink and with the means to gratify every wish is depicted with vigorous 
and rapid strokes in a well told story. * * We recommend this book for 
Sunday-school libraries."— " rA€ Pacific," San Francisco. 

VICTOR HUGO. 

GAVROCHE, THE GAMIN OF PARIS. From " Les Miserables," 

by Victor Hugo. Translated and adapted by M. C. Pyle. A 

charming story. 16mo, cloth, black and gilt, §1.00. 

"This story is a charming episode in "Victor Hugo's famous book, ' Les 

Miserables.' It is a very touching and strongly drawn picture of Parisian 

life. The hero is a ' Gamin,' or street boy of Paris, who lives a vagabond 

life, and takes a precocious part in events of the great capital."— JPA^ Age, 

Philadelphia. 

CAROLINE H. B. LAING. 

THE SEVEN KINGS OF THE SEVEN HILLS. A popular 
ancient history of Rome, designed for children. 16mo, illus- 
trated, $1.00. 

M. C. PYLE. 

MINNA IN WONDERLAND, AND ROLAND AND HIS 
FRIENDS. A charming new juvenile. Beautifully illus- 
trated. Cloth, black and gold, $1.00. 



PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 27 



MARGARET HOSMER. 



LITTLE ROSIE'S FIPvST PLAY DAYS. Illustrated. 18mo., 160 
pp., 75 cents. 

LITTLE ROSIE'S CHRISTMAS TIMES. Illustrated. ISmo., IGO 
pp., 75 cents. 

LITTLE ROSIE IN THE COUNTRY. Illustrated. ISmo., 160 pp. 
75 cents. 

"Very nice children's books, indeed, and we only wisli that we had more 
space to say so, and more tiyie to say it in. Any present-giving I'ather-s, 
mothers, uncles, aunts, brothers, or sisters, who have a care for the little 
people, may safely order these for home consumption."— iTAe Hartford 
Churchman. 

"A charming series of stories for the younger class of readers, full of in- 
teresting incidents and good moral and religioas instruction, brought down 
to the comprehension of a child in such a v/ay as to produce a salutary im- 
pression. They are calculated also to teach parents how to keep children 
employed in what is i)leasant and useful, thus superseding the necessity of 
imposing so many restraints to keep them from evil. This is apt to be the 
great fault in the management of children. They are given nothing inno- 
cent and useful with which to employ their active, restless minds, and then 
parents wonder that they need be always in mischief. Eosie's mother better 
comprehended the wants of a child, and forestalled temptations to end by 
incentives to ^ood." — Springfield Daily Union, 

UNDER THE HOLLY; or, Christmas at Hopeton Grange. A 
Book for Girls. By Mrs. Hosmer and Miss -. 12mo. Illus- 
trated. Cloth, extra, $1.50. 

" And this we can and do most confidently recommend to parents who are 
laithfully striving to provide only wholesome food for the intellectual appe- 
tite of their children. The tone of the book is pure and healthful, the style 
easy and graceful, and the incidents are such as to give pleasure without at 
all kindling the passion for exciting fiction, which is so rampant among the 
young people of our Aaj."—Maryla7id Church Hecord. 

" This is entitled, ' A Book for Girls,' but it would interest the youth of 
either sex. It is a succession of tales told at the Christmas season. We can 
recommend them all for their interest and moral. It is for ' children of a 
larger growth,' not a mere story-book for the little ones:'— Fhiladelphia 
Daily Age. 

LENNY, THE ORPHAN; or, Trials and Triumphs. Illustrated, 
by Faber. 16rQo. Price, S1.25. 

"A story book of an orphan boy, who is thrown loose upon the world by 
a conflagration, in which his mother and only surviving parent is burnt. 
The varieties of experience, both sorrowful and happy, through which the 
boy passes, are wrought up into a story of no little power, and yet are such 
as often occur in actual life. The religious teachings of the book are good, 
and penetrate the entire structure of the story. We recommend it cor 
dially to a place in the Sunday-school lil>ia.Trj.''— Sunday-School Times, Phila- 
■ delphia. 

" The author of this book has vsrritten some of the best Sunday-school 
books which have recently been iaeued from the press of the American Sun- 
day School Union. The volume before us portrays the trials of a little boy, 
who loses his mother in early life, and is subjected to the intrigues of a de- 
signing person, from which he obtains a happy deliverance. The story is 
well planned and written, and its moral and religious lessons are good."— 
Weekly Freednian, New Brunswick, N. J. 



28 PORTER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 



PAUL KONEWKA. 

THE CATASTROPHE OF THE HALL. Illustrated with original 
drawings in Silhouette by the late Paul Konewka, in his most 
characteristic manner. Beautifully printed on tinted paper. 
Quarto. Boards, $1.00; Cloth, extra, black and gold, $1.50. 

" A rhymed tale about three kittens, Beauty, Monkey and Dot, illustrated 
with silhouettes, by the late Paul Konewka, so spirited and so funny, that 
the children who read will be apt to agree with the boy on the title-page in 
being 'particularly glad that God did cats.' "—New York Daily Tribune. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

THE LIBRARY ; or, What Z^ooks to Read, and How to Buy them. 

A few practical hints, by an old Bookbuyer. lOmo, paper cover, 

10 cents per copy ; 5*8.00 per hundred. 
Everybody has felt the want of a reliable guide in selecting books for their 
library. In this little manual, the author has endeavored lirst, in a prelimi- 
nary essay, to point out how to read books to the best advantage, and how- 
to buy them; second, what books to buy, by giving lists of some lifteen 
hundred- volumes of standard works, such as are necessary to every woU- 
selected library; these are given with the number of volumes, the best and 
different editions, and the prices. It thus forms a complete and intelligent 
guide, as to Vt'hat is best to buy lirst, such as every person of any pretensions 
to literary taste should posses's. 

THOUGHTS OF PEACE ; or. Strong Hope and Consolation for the 
Bearer of the Cross." From the last London edition. Beauti- 
fully printed on tinted paper, with carmine border. Square 
16mo. Fine English cloth, bevelled boards, red edges, $1.50. 
" Remarkable as the assertion is, that very many of the best works are 
the product of the chastened and afflicted in society, it is nevertheless true 
that the world is greatly enriched by the presence of invalid gifted minds in 
all ages. This delightful little volume is the product of one who has felt the 
acuteness of disease, and it illustrates the experience of one w^ho has long 
been an invalid. The Scriptural texts, and poetic suggestions, evince a rich 
acquaintance with the scriptures and the poets. The book is beautifully 
printed on tinted paper, red line border, and richly bound. Many would 
prize it as a gift book."— Pi«is6i(riy Gazette. 

" This is a reprint from the latest London edition, and is a beautiful little 
work, both in style of typography and binding, and in the sentimentsjudi- 
ciously selected and collated from the Sacred Scriptures and poets. It com- 
prises three hundred and sixty-five of the most sou 1-comfortingand inspiring 
texts of the Bible— one for each day of the year. Pollowing each text is a 
sliort selection from some hymn, or sacred poem of corresponding senti- 
ment. No better souvenir could be given to one having experienced some 
of life's sorrows— and who has not!— and who has learned to look for con- 
solation to Holy Writ."— JiciMc/i Chunk Gazette. 

PAPA'S BOOK OP ANIMALS. Wild and Tame. Chiefly from 
the writings of Rev. J. G. Wood and Tiio.s. Bingley. With 
r3ixteen large and spirited drawincrs, hy H. C. Bispham. Small 
4to., fine English cloth, gilt, bev. bds. Price, $1.25. 

SLOVENLY PETER; or. Cheerful Stories and Funny Pictures for 

Good Little Folks. With nearly two hundred engravings. 

Beautifully colored. Printed on heavy paper. Large 4to. 

Cloth, bevelled boards, extra, $1.75. 

A new edition of this charming book, a standard among juveniles. Surely 

lessons of stern moralitj^ and humanity were never more pleasantly and 

effectually taught than in this book. 



PORrER & COATES' PUBLICATIONS. 29 

ROSE VALLEY LIBRARY. C vols. 32mo. Illustrated. In neat, 
box. Per vol., 25 cents. 
KobinsoH Crusoe. Discontented Tom. 

Kva Bruen. Edith Locke. 

Willie and Ned. Ben Benson. 

ALADDIN; or, The Wonderful Lamp. With flfteen large and 
beautiful illustrations, by F. O, C. Darl^y. Small 4to, fine Eng- 
lish cloth, gilt, bev. bds., $1.50. 

THE HAPPY CHILD'S PICTURES OF ANIMALS AND BIRDS. 
4to. Illustrated Avith large colored pictures from drawings of 
animals and birds, by Harrison Wier. Fancy boards. Price 
43 cents. 

MOTHER GOOSE'S COMPLETE EDITION OF HER RHYMES, 
CHIMES, AND MELODIES. 12S pp., profusely illustrated, 
colored, sctuare 12mo. Fancy boards, 60 cents ; cloth, gilt, 75 cts. 

LETTER WRITERS. 

THE GENTLEMAN'S LETTER-WRITER. Bound in boards, 
cloth back. 139 pp. Price, 33 cents. 

THE LADY'S LETTER- WRITER. Bound in boards, cloth back. 
139 pp. Price, 85 cents, 

THE COMPLETE LETTER-WRITER. For the use of Ladies 
and Gentlenren; containing both the above bound in one vol- 
ume. 273 1313. Cloth, gilt. Price, 75 cents, 

USEFUL HAND-BOOKS. 

GOOD MANNERS.' A Handbook of Etiquette and the Usages of 
Good Society. Elegantly printed, v/ith red-line border. Square 
24mo, cloth, illuminated side, bev. bds., gilt top, S1.50. 

FLOWERS: Their Language, Poetry, and Sentiment. With 
choicest extracts from Poets, a complete Dictionary of the 
Language and Sentiment of every Flower, with lists of Bou- 
quets for every nronth, Floral Dial, &c., &c. The most complete 
book on the subject issued. With beautiful colored plates of 
bouquets. Elegantly printed, with red-line border. Square 
21mo, cloth, illuminated sides, bev. bds., gilt top, $1.50. 

THE ART OF PLEASING; or, the American Lady's and Gentle- 
man's Book of Etiquette. The latest and best small book of 
Etiquette published; containing twice as much as any other 
book of this size. S2mo, cloth, extra, 40 cents ; do., gilt edges, 
full gilt illuminated sides, 50 cents. 

FLORA'S POCKET DICTIONARY. A New Lexicon of the Lan- 
guage of Flowers, and of the Sentiment of Flowei-s. The most 
complete book of this size ever published. Just ready. 32mo. 
Cloth, extra, 40 cents; do., gilt edges, with illuminated side, 
50 cents. 

THE GUIDE TO FORTUNE; A Collection of Receipts of great 
value. Giving full, plain, and practical directions for the 
manufacturing, putting up, and selling of a great variety of 
useful and saleable articles needed and used in every store, 
workshop, household, or farm. Intended to furnish employ- 
ment to those out of work, a saving of labor and money to 
every one, ways to make money inst, &c., &c. 16mo.. 175 rm. 
Cloth, extra. Price, 75 cents. 




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